


say good night, full circle

by neocxxlture



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Dream Sharing, Insomnia, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Slow Burn, Symbolism, University AU, don't let the tags confuse you this is a Love Story, fantastical elements, tiiiny bit of gore for one nightmare scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 22:57:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neocxxlture/pseuds/neocxxlture
Summary: The moon hangs low in the dark sky overhead. It bathes everything around Taeyong in glistening silver light, a sort of translucent quality to the glow. It is a quiet, somber night; he stands by a lake, the only sound the water gently lapping at the stones by the shore.Taeyong holds a star in the cup of his palm.





	say good night, full circle

**Author's Note:**

> here she is. at last. miss dreamfic. i spent a lot of time on this, and put great care into it. i really hope you like it.
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0GmweVqs6LMTJwFC5kskYN) for full immersion. i carefully picked out each of these songs to fit characters, themes, and chapters. 
> 
> enjoy💚

 

 _when we all fall_ [ _asleep_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHC9tYz8ik) _, where do we go?_

i) moon

☀️

The moon hangs low in the dark sky overhead. It bathes everything around Taeyong in glistening silver light, a sort of translucent quality to the glow. It is a quiet, somber night; he stands by a lake, the only sound the water gently lapping at the stones by the shore.

Taeyong holds a star in the cup of his palm.

It is bright, yet it doesn’t burn his skin. It is bright, yet he doesn’t need to squint his eyes against the light. It is bright, yet it feels like it’s not, and he looks at it, marvels at its beauty, trails a finger slowly along its edges.

Taeyong holds a star in the cup of his palm, and so he knows that he is dreaming.

His grandma once told him, _you just need to notice the right things, and you will wake up._

Taeyong plucked a star right out of the sky above, like he was reaching for an apple on a tree. It feels weightless in his hand, like it’s not there at all. The moon smiles down at him, and it is like it’s calling to him, like it’s teasing, like it’s challenging: _try to take me too, if you dare._

His grandma once told him, _once you’re awake, you can do anything._

Taeyong walks forward, slowly, one foot in front of the other. He is close to the water, and yet, no matter how many steps he takes he finds himself the exact same distance away. The lake is not big. He can see all the way to the other side. The water is still and dark and Taeyong feels like it whispers to him. He hears the waves crash over shore, yet there are no ripples on the surface. It is like a mirror, and Taeyong thinks if he were to touch it, it would bite and cut him to bone.

The moon reflects in the water, the image turned upside down, perfectly mirrored. There is the sky and the stars blinking at him, there are the trees swaying in phantom breeze, there is a small figure standing at the opposite shore.

Taeyong’s grandma once told him, _there is a boy here that needs help._

This is not Taeyong’s first time seeing him. They stand opposite each other, each at one end of the lake between them. Taeyong cannot see his face in detail, as it’s too dark, but he knows that he is _little_ ; he can’t be more than eight years old. He is slight in build and in height, his nest of black hair tussled and messy. He stands motionless, facing Taeyong’s way, like he always does when they meet.

There is something behind the little boy, something that is far but feels like it’s coming closer and closer, creeping upon them. The night is dark, but there is still the silvery light of the moon by which Taeyong can see; and yet this thing that lurks just beyond the horizon seems darker than dark, blacker than black, and it crawls to them like ink seeping onto a page of paper, slow but insistent and unforgiving.

Taeyong takes a step closer. The boy takes a step back and then turns around and runs away, away from Taeyong and the thing behind him, runs until he disappears between the trees and Taeyong can no longer see him.

There is a child here that needs help. There is a little boy, and Taeyong thinks that he must be frightened, he must be so incredibly scared to be here alone in this vast, fearsome place; he keeps running and running and running and Taeyong cannot think of a single thing to do to help him.

The land around him changes, the scene shifts – the lake disappears, the sun replaces the moon in the sky. Taeyong feels the dream pushing at the back of his mind, and he cannot fight it for long, never able to keep himself awake for more than a few minutes at a time; and there isn’t a point to being awake anymore now, so he relaxes, lets the dream slip into his mind and swallow him whole and wash across his mind, like he’s submerging himself under water.

☀️

Taeyong had first awoken when he was twelve years old.

His grandmother was there with him, the very first time. They were seated at a table in a house Taeyong did not recognize but undeniably felt comfortable in, put at ease; they sat on the wooden floor behind a mahogany table, every inch of it covered in bowls of various food.

There was no smell. The dishes looked freshly cooked, but when Taeyong took the bowls to his hands, they did not feel hot to the touch. He tried eating some of it, scooping up a generous amount of rice on his spoon, stuffing his face full. The first thing he’d noticed that seemed weird – there was no taste at all.

Taeyong knew food, and knew what it was supposed to feel like inside his mouth – but he was chewing, over and over and over, and still. There was no taste.

And so he knew something was wrong.

His grandmother watched him, her kind eyes a deep deep brown, lit up in a way he’d never seen before. For a while he could not figure out why that seemed so strange, why her gaze made him feel like he should remember something, something stuck at the very back of his mind. His very thoughts felt sluggish and sticky, slow to come to him, like he was trying to run but was unable to make his feet move a single inch.

“Taeyong,” his grandmother said, voice clear, melodic and nice, “What do you see?”

He did not understand. They were there together, in this house he didn‘t know which felt like home somehow anyway, she saw the same things he saw. It was a strange thing to ask. There were a lot of things around: the table full of food, the partition to another room, golden rays of sunlight streaming into the room through an open window to the right of them. A single green plant on the windowsill. He replied, “You.”

She smiled, dimples in her cheeks, wrinkles around her eyes. “I missed you. I miss you, still.”

Taeyong was so confused. Something was not how it was supposed to be, he knew this. “But I’m right here.”

“You are,” she said, looking happy and sad at the same time, a peculiar expression, “And I am so glad I can talk to you again.”

She took him by the hand. He could feel her grip on his fingers, soft like a ribbon of silk. “Taeyong, look at me.”

He was looking. He thought he was looking. There was something about her eyes, about the way they seemed to bore into him, intense in a way he’d never seen before. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at him like this, and even the color of her hair seemed out of place, too dark, different than he knew it to be—she was graying now, but she looked younger right then, the way he’d seen in pictures in his mother’s picture books before.

He knew it was her, and yet it wasn’t. The realization came to him suddenly, all at once, hit him like a summer storm; the realization that what he was seeing was not real.

“You can’t be here,” he said, so lost. He didn’t understand; he was still holding onto her hand, and now he noticed that her grip was strong, like she was afraid he’d disappear if she let him go.

“Darling,” she said with a watery smile. He hated that he’d made her cry. “You’re dreaming. You just need to notice the right things, and you will wake up.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, Taeyong knew she was telling the truth. He acutely became aware of it himself, like the admission was the only trigger missing to his realization: he felt his body, lying in his bed, felt his heartbeat in his ears, the excitement bubbling up in his chest.

He wanted to answer, tell her that he could feel it, that he was aware that he was sleeping – how weird that was, how absolutely strange. Before he could, though, the excitement of the discovery was too severe, and so he opened his eyes abruptly to his dark room instead, interrupted in his slumber. He didn’t know why he woke up. He knew he had a dream, and could not remember what it was about.

That was the beginning.

He couldn’t remember his first lucid dream when he woke up the next day, but during the nights following, before she passed, Taeyong would meet his grandmother again and again, and she would repeat to him over and over, _there is a boy here that needs help._

_Taeyong, will you save him?_

And he promised her he would do all that it takes.

☀️

Usually, when Taeyong wakes up in the morning, he does not remember what he dreamt about that night.

It’s a weird state to be in, he thinks. He retains only bits and pieces; fleeting, indistinctive images and impressions of feelings that don’t fit together no matter how much he tries to recall what he’s dreamed about, or make any sense of them. There are times when he wakes up scared or confused, even though he has no idea why or what could have caused him to feel so. Other times he just wakes up exhausted, despite having slept a full eight hours. Sometimes he comes to, and vaguely feels like he dreamt of something important, something that he should not be forgetting.

Sometimes Taeyong dreams of Yuta.

Out of his friends and family, Yuta is the only person that appears in Taeyong’s dreams regularly. Usually Taeyong isn’t lucid through their in-dream meetings. The few times that he happens to be so, though, it goes a little bit like this:

Taeyong tries to talk to Yuta. Talking to people that are dreaming but not awake is a little bit like talking to a really confused artificial intelligence – he can converse with him, but none of what Yuta replies back makes much sense. He answers Taeyong’s questions, but it’s like he doesn’t hear him at all or hears only what he wants to hear.

There is a far off look in Yuta’s eyes. They appear glassy and like they’re clouded over from the inside, faded. Taeyong tries to get him to wake up, when he has the chance, repeats it to him over and over, but Yuta only laughs and keeps on dreaming, uninterrupted.

Sometimes Yuta takes Taeyong‘s hands into his, and holds on. His grip is light, like the brush of a feather, so soft against Taeyong’s skin. He looks so happy, Taeyong cannot bring himself to retract his hands or shake him off, even when Yuta gets too close. It’s only a dream, after all, he reasons. There’s no real harm in it, even when Yuta tells him something Taeyong is sure he would never say while awake, admitting feelings he wouldn’t admit to Taeyong’s face.

In his dreams, though, Yuta’s feelings are safe. And Taeyong will protect them, as much as he can.

He doesn’t recall any of this when he is actually awake, in reality. Weirdly, he does remember his real life in his dreams, but it doesn’t work the other way around. Sometimes it’s frustrating – mostly when there’s a nagging voice in his head that tells him during the day, _there is something important that you should remember,_ but he finds himself unable to do so _._

☀️

He wakes to repeated knocking on his door.

He is disoriented for a short moment, blinking sleep out of his eyes. Sunlight streams through the open blinds into the room, casts light on the wooden floorboards and his bed, illuminates the dust particles that are floating by lazily. Guessing, Taeyong figures it might be before noon, and tries to remember what has interrupted his slumber.

He is reminded soon, as the knocking comes again, loud and rapt.

He quickly remembers that it’s Saturday, today. He shuffles out of the covers and rubs a palm over his face, trying to regain all his senses. He hears soft paddling over the floor, and looks up just as Ruby jumps onto the bed and demands he pay her attention. “Hi, baby,” he tells her softly, voice raspy with sleep. He reaches out and pets her on the head with one hand. “Good morning.”

The knocking comes again. Taeyong heaves a sigh and finally stands up to walk over to the door.

Yuta stands at his doorstep. He takes in Taeyong’s disheveled state and laughs, “Did I wake you up?”

“Mm-hm,” is Taeyong’s way of reply as he opens the door wider for Yuta to get in and steps back into the apartment. “What do you want?”

Yuta closes the door after himself and crouches down to scratch Ruby behind her ears when she paddles over to greet him, tail wagging from side to side. Yuta doesn’t even look away from her when he replies, “I was thinking we could go out today.”

“It’s Saturday morning,” Taeyong nearly whines, dragging his feet over the floor as he walks to the bathroom.

“It’s afternoon, actually,” Yuta’s voice carries into the little room.

Taeyong brushes his teeth and washes his face. When he returns to the room he finds Yuta in the same place, still petting Ruby, who’s now lying on her back to give him access to her stomach. “You could have called first,” he tells him, opening his wardrobe. “What if I already had plans?”

“Tae, you never have any plans,” Yuta replies at once.

Taeyong doesn’t bother refuting the statement. It’s true enough.

He changes out of his pajamas into a pair of comfy pants and a t-shirt. When he’s done, Yuta finally stands up and looks at him. “I’m surprised you weren’t up already. You don’t usually sleep in.”

Taeyong takes Ruby’s collar from where it rests on his desk. “Well, I was up late last night. Come here, Ruby.” He waits for her to paddle over, fastens it around her throat carefully, and then addresses Yuta, “Will you walk with us, or do you wanna stay here?”

“I’ll go with you,” Yuta says, so Taeyong puts on his shoes and a light jacket, grabs his keys, and they leave the apartment.

They walk around the block in silence for a few minutes, but then Yuta asks Taeyong, “Why were you up late?”

Taeyong rubs at his eyes, still feeling like he’s half-asleep. “I was watching a show.” He admits, kind of feeling silly about it. “It was really good, so I watched all of it at once.”

“Then it’s a good thing you don’t have school today,” Yuta shoots him a smile. Taeyong mirrors it, but he has to look away from his cheerful face after a while.

There is something about Yuta’s cheerful grin that tugs on Taeyong’s memory, but he doesn’t know what it is he’s trying to remember. It’s weird – like a déja vu in a way, but not quite. Like he’s seen this scene before. He has, of course, he’s seen Yuta smile plenty of times at him before. So why is this time different?

It feels like the realization is just at the back of his mind, he just needs to reach for it a little further – but Yuta speaks first, and efficiently halts Taeyong’s thought process in its tracks. “Wanna grab a meal with me later?”

Taeyong wonders for a splinter of a second why Yuta came over today – they weren’t supposed to hang out. It’s not that he minds though, not in the slightest; but it’s curious.

He likes spending time with Yuta, however. “Sure, why not.” He had no plans for the day anyway. Assignments can wait until tomorrow. There’s no reason for him to turn down Yuta’s offer.

☀️

Sometimes Taeyong will sleep, and he will not question the things that he sees.

There are times when nothing that happens in his dreams seems weird. Anything that happens, no matter how implausible, he takes as a fact. Objects that change shape when he looks away, his phone that goes haywire for no reason when he tries to check his messages to see if Yuta texted him, or even when he’s flying around town, high above in the sky, looking down at the skyscrapers and houses like he’s used to doing so every single day.

He isn’t really sure why he sometimes notices when things are out of order or don’t make sense. The way it happens seems random and nonsensical, just the way dreams are.

Sometimes, though, he will look, and at once he will know that he is fast asleep, only awake in his mind.

He is in Hongdae, standing in front of a building, looking around. He is not alone. Hongdae, as it usually is, is overcrowded even in his imagination.

There is a figure amongst the crowd, but this one is still, unmoving and rigid like a statue. It is distinctly male, Taeyong thinks, but he cannot be sure; it is a person, certainly, but they are wearing a mask over their head, a black cloth that covers them to their shoulders, and so Taeyong cannot see their face.

Despite the mask, Taeyong gets the feeling they are looking right at him. Something is weird about the area where he thinks their face should be, but he is too far to see clearly just what makes it so. He tries, but he cannot make out more than indistinct shapes and colors– he only knows that something is not as it should be.

The people around them go on, but they both stand motionless, facing each other.

Taeyong has had nightmares before. He is familiar with the way fear bites into his body, the way his heartbeat picks up, how he becomes short of breath. It is not really anything new, and that is the feeling this person instills in him, then; and there is the natural reaction, his instinct that tells him to run, or to hide.

Taeyong has had nightmares, but he has never been lucid through them, and so this is the first time he’s experiencing it – he is not terrified, but he does startle.

A nightmare is only another form of dream. Nothing will happen to him, he knows this – rationally, he realizes that he is safe, that there is no reason to run. But still he feels like he should. He could try to meld the dream, could try to erase this masked figure, to make them disappear, to just make the entire nightmare disappear – but that would take concentration he fears he doesn’t possess and he does not want to force himself awake in reality, not just yet.

And so he turns around. Maybe if he doesn’t acknowledge it, it could dispense in the dream around him naturally and leave him alone. He thinks he hears a “Wait!” but that could be anyone; he is surrounded by people that are moving and talking and seemingly everywhere around him at once.

“Please, wait!” It is coming from behind him, there is no doubt, but Taeyong doesn’t look back, doesn’t want to, fears what he’s going to see if he does. He walks forward, down the street that feels vaguely like Hongdae but isn’t, and somewhere at the back of his mind he is aware of his body lying in his bed, and he knows he is too close to the surface.

Someone grabs him by the elbow, halting him in his movements. He stumbles and looks back, an exclamation dying in the depth of his throat as he comes face to face with the masked figure, towering above him like a hooded giant.

He wakes up with a jolt.

He blinks his eyes awake and blearily looks at the clock on his phone. 4:13 am. He turns in his bed with a groan. What the hell even wakes him up at this hour, he wonders, but he cannot recall more than a sunlit Hongdae street and the feeling of fingertips on his forearms, and he is too tired to try, so he lets his mind wander and fall right back to sleep.

☀️

“You look like shit,” Yuta tells him in lieu of hello, sliding into his place next to Taeyong at the cafeteria table. “Don’t tell me you’ve been up binge watching something again.”

Taeyong blinks at him, pulling one earphone out of his ears. He pauses his music for Yuta. Yuta never seems grateful for that. “I was not.”

“Oh,” Yuta frowns, leans closer to examine his face. “Then what’s up?”

Taeyong _is_ tired; he woke up to his 7:30am alarm the way he’d gotten through his following classes: only barely managing. He’d slept plenty, though, so it’s strange that he’s so exhausted now, but that’s the way it has always been, “I didn’t sleep well.”

Yuta hums thoughtfully, “Nightmares?”

Taeyong shakes his head, “No, I don’t really get nightmares,” he says, wishing he could remember more of what he dreamt about instead of only fractured pieces, “It was just—weird dreams. I think.”

It’s not _not true,_ he figures, his dreams do feel weird, like they’re not really dreams at all, even if he can’t recall what they’re about. But he cannot say that, not when he has got nothing to back up his claims – he can’t tell Yuta only that he feels like something is wrong.

“What about?” Yuta asks, attentive and gentle. Taeyong wishes he was able to tell him.

He shrugs his shoulders, letting a sigh escape his lips. The cafeteria is packed full of people, and all their chatter filters into noise at the back of his mind. They’re sitting at a secluded table, away from the biggest crowd, by the windows. Sunlight streams in, hits Yuta from behind, washes him aglow in gold and honey brown. It makes Taeyong think of Hongdae, somehow. “I don’t really remember.”

It seems like Yuta wants to inquire further, but thinks better of it at the last second. He asks, cheerily, “Wanna hang out after school?”

Taeyong considers the offer, “Got anything in mind?”

“Dunno, thought we could play videogames,” Yuta shrugs, throwing the idea out there, “We haven’t done that in a while.”

“Okay, sure,” Taeyong assents. “I’ll wipe the floor with your ass.”

Yuta rolls his eyes with a laugh, “You wish.”

☀️

Taeyong recognizes the figure when he spots him the second time.

He is standing still at the edge of the road, watching Taeyong. Or so Taeyong thinks. There’s again the shiver that runs up Taeyong’s spine to his neck, makes his skin prick, makes him wonder who it is, why he is there. What does he want.

Taeyong still feels scared, a tiny bit, but the fear is dulled by the growing curiosity. This person – he’s different than anyone else here, even though Taeyong can’t really figure out why yet.

Maybe it’s that the figure catches him staring, but at once he strides towards Taeyong, swiftly moving through the crowd of people on the street. Taeyong waits until he gets close.

“You’re awake,” the figure says, voice low and subdued, sort of like he can’t believe he’s talking to Taeyong at all, “You’re awake, aren’t you?”

He’s still got the mask on, like he did the one other time Taeyong has seen him. He is so close now that Taeyong can take a good look at it, can see that what he’d thought to be a distortion in the place of his face is no distortion at all – the area is full of separate pieces of mirror. The shards cover his entire face, it seems, smaller and bigger ones, reflecting all that is around them from a dozen different angles. Taeyong can see a bit of the street behind him, a neon sign to the side, his own dark eye staring right back at him.

“I am,” Taeyong blinks, and watches the reflection blink, only a second delayed. “Are you?” It’s silly maybe, to ask that, but things never really make sense in his dreams anyway. He is not sure that this person isn’t a figment of his imagination still, a nightmare waiting for him to lower his guard before it strikes.

He does not get an answer to his question, but he does get a reply, “I’m sorry for scaring you, before.” Taeyong remembers well, the way his arm was grabbed, the spike of his heart when he turned to look at him. “That was not my intention. I only wanted to talk to you.”

They stand in the middle of a crowd. No one pays them attention. Yuta was there just a moment ago, but when Taeyong turns to look for him now, he finds him absent – and no one else seems to see them.

Sometimes Taeyong can realize he’s in a dream by simply looking at the people around him; they are there, but they are not the way real people should be. They talk but what they say does not make sense; they look but their eyes are glazed over, like they’re not all present. They can touch him, but their touch feels fleeting, like wind skimming over his skin, there but only barely tangible.

Suddenly, Taeyong comes to the realization in his mind that the masked guy is awake, the way Taeyong is. He just does not seem to fit into the place, into the dreamspace, as Taeyong had come to call it; he cannot see his eyes but he imagines that they are sharp and trained on him. He is waiting still, waiting for Taeyong to say something. The sun reflects off a shard of mirror on his mask.

“Why do you want to talk to me?” is what he asks, even though he has plenty of other questions to ask him.

There is quiet, for a while. Even though there’s commotion all around them, Taeyong does not hear much sound to accompany it. It is almost unnatural how still the boy in the mask can stand. Like he is trying to appear to be a fixture in the scene. “Because you’re like me,” he says in the end, words measured. “You are aware that you’re dreaming.”

There is something behind his words, lurking underneath, a tone he was not able to keep out of his voice. Taeyong cannot put his finger on it.

Taeyong doesn’t reply, as he’s not sure what to really say. The masked guy doesn’t seem to either notice or mind. “Sorry, it’s just been so long—I’m sorry,” he laughs, not a happy sound in the slightest. “I’m going about this entirely the wrong way. My name is Doyoung.” He introduces himself. “What’s yours?”

It sounds vaguely familiar. He wonders where he’d heard it before. He cannot recall. “Taeyong.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Taeyong,” Doyoung says, and sounds like he means it. He takes a step forward and gestures with his hand in the direction down the street. “Will you walk with me? Please? We can talk. If you want to.”

Taeyong could say no. He realizes that, all of the sudden – he could refuse. He could turn his back to this person with a mask, this Doyoung. He could walk away, could let the dream continue in its natural progression. But that is what stops him from doing so. He is dreaming. There is nothing that can happen to him here, he is safe. And he would be lying if he’d said he wasn’t really curious; except for his grandmother all those years ago, no one has ever talked to him while he was lucid. He’d had questions for her that she wasn’t able to answer, answers that Doyoung might have.

So he nods. He figures he’s got nothing to lose. “Where would we be going?”

“Anywhere you want,” Taeyong thinks he hears the ghost of a smile in the reply, “Anywhere at all.”

They start walking down the street, slowly, almost lazily. The people around them avoid them, but still Taeyong gets the feeling they’re not really seeing them. It’s like they’re not a part of the dream anymore, and instead are intruding. Taeyong focuses on their surroundings as they walk: it’s the Hongdae street that he knows so familiarly, but also it is not. The shops are out of order, bigger or smaller than they really are. The signs in the windows are wrong or downright nonsensical.

One thing that strikes Taeyong as odd – considering that everything about this situation is already strange – is that the dream did not change. It usually does after a short while, because Taeyong isn’t often able to sustain his lucid state. The dream always pulls him under. But now – it’s been long, too long since he’d awoken, and still the street does not shift to another scene.

“We’re still in Hongdae,” he muses aloud, although he did not mean to. “Why does it not change?”

Doyoung answers in a tone void of any inflection, like he’s commenting on the weather. “I am keeping the dream stable for us.”

Taeyong startles at that, and looks up at his face – only to find mirrors in its place. For a second he’d forgotten they were there at all. Taeyong watches the reflections for a moment. Even if he’s not facing him directly, Taeyong is still reflected in one of the pieces. “That’s hard to do.”

“It is,” he replies, “but it’s not impossible.”

“Can you change it, as well?” Taeyong can’t help but ask, fascinated. Not even his grandmother had been able to do so. “To anything you want?”

The mirrors turn to face him and for a moment Taeyong’s skin prickles. He gets the feeling he’s being assessed, measured. “I could.”

For a heartbeat nothing happens. And then everything around them breaks and adjusts anew.

It happens almost in one single moment, one intake of his breath and blink of his eye. They are in Hongdae, and then suddenly they’re standing beneath the wide dark sky, high above on a hill overlooking the city down in front of them. It is night, and the city comes alive in neon, bathed in points of orange and violet and blue. It is shimmering, like it’s alive and breathing. Taeyong can feel it in his veins. His breath is knocked out of his lungs.

It takes him a moment to turn his gaze away from the scene. All the lights are glimmering in the mirrors on the mask. “I used to try to change the dreams, when I realized I was sleeping,” he confesses. “But I would always wake myself up with the effort.”

Doyoung is silent for a moment. Beside them, a family passes by on their way up the road. Taeyong, so focused on the city down at the foot of the hill, hasn’t noticed that there was more up ahead – a building with a flight of stone stairs leading to a lookout area.

The people do not notice them. It is a woman and a man with a child between them, a small boy. He is holding onto his parents’ hands, jumping forward as they all ascend the hill, clearly excited. Their clothes look damp at the shoulders and arms, like they were walking through the rain for a while. From where he stands, Taeyong only catches a glimpse of the face of the father, smiling down at his kid, mouth moving as he tells him something. There is no sound.

“It only takes practice and time,” Doyoung says in the end. He seems to have completely ignored the family walking by. “You can try now, if you want. Whatever you think up, I’ll keep it steady.”

“But I don’t- I don’t even know what to change it to,” Taeyong stammers. He doesn’t even know how to do it, really; the most he’d ever done is change bits and pieces of his surroundings that were already there, like the color of his grandmother’s flowers on the windowsill, or reach for a star in the sky and will it to come to him.

“Try to recreate a memory,” Doyoung suggests, tone nice and warm. “That is easier than creating an entirely new dream.”

“Oh, so is all this,” Taeyong gestures around them. “Is this just a memory?”

“Yes.” Doyoung answers. “It is a place I have visited before.”

Then he waits. Taeyong watches himself in a mirror and tries to recall a memory of any place, but it does not come to him easily. It is hard to really think, here, and his head is starting to hurt with the effort. He’d never been lucid for such an extended period of time at once – it is taking its toll on him, he can feel it. He can vaguely sense the dream pushing in on his thoughts and into his consciousness, wants him to succumb to its lure. The only reason he didn’t yet is because Doyoung is keeping it at bay.

“I... I don’t think I can do it,” Taeyong admits. It’s getting increasingly difficult to pay attention. He realizes, belatedly, that he is tired. “I’m sorry.”

Taeyong closes his eyes. He hears Doyoung say, “It’s alright,” but it is muffled, like it’s coming from behind a closed door or a great distance away. He’s not even sure Doyoung had spoken at all.

He thinks he hears his name. There is darkness, but only for a second.

☀️

Taeyong is exhausted. He cannot keep his eyes open, no matter how hard he wants to, no matter that he’d already been chastised by the professor or elbowed in his ribs by Yuta. He wants to sleep.

Yuta presses an energy drink to his hand after the lecture. They’re standing in the hallway in front of the class. Taeyong doesn’t recall how they’ve got there.

He blinks at the can in his hold. He hears Yuta sigh from beside him. “Drink that.” It takes Taeyong three tries to pop the can open. “You look dead on your feet.”

Taeyong drinks first, and answers only after he gulps down about half the drink, “I feel like it.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Taeyong frowns. “Only in the morning.” He went to sleep fairly early, considering his usual schedule. It didn’t even take him too long to fall asleep. It’s just that he woke up around five with the biggest headache, and now the exhaustion is catching up with him. He wasn’t able to go back to sleep after.

“You know,” Yuta starts, like he’s not sure he should be saying anything in the first place, hesitant, “Maybe you should talk to someone about this.”

It takes a second for Taeyong’s mind to process the words. “About what?”

“Your insomnia,” Yuta replies, softly, like he’s trying not to spook him. Taeyong knows he does not mean to lecture. It still comes off that way. “It’s been going on for a while.”

He feels Yuta’s eyes burn on his skin. He cannot make himself face him. “I’m fine. It‘s alright. It doesn’t happen that often.”

“Taeyong,” Yuta starts, but lets the sentence hang in between them, as unwilling to voice it aloud as Taeyong himself is.

“Thanks for this,” Taeyong shakes the can in his hand. He still can’t look at Yuta. He’s not ready to face the disappointment that must be apparent on his face.

“Yeah, no problem,” Yuta mutters at last. They leave for their next class. Yuta doesn’t talk to him until classes are all over.

☀️

Taeyong is standing facing the mouth of a tunnel.

There are rails, disappearing into the darkness inside. He stands in between them and gazes at the opening a couple meters away.

There is a boy. Taeyong cannot see his face, it is hidden in shadow and fog, too far from him to be able to make it out – but he is sure. There’s no other boy in his dreams. It’s the little kid. The one that he keeps meeting.

The rails disappear. Now there is only grass and plants, reaching all the way up to his hips. It almost swallows the figure of the child whole, he’s so tiny. Taeyong needs to get to him, before the darkness does.

He cannot move well. The grass and flowers around him halt his movements, and it’s like he’s swimming outside of water, unable to put feet one in front of the other the way he wants to, the way he knows he can. The boy waits, standing still, regarding him. Taeyong wants to call out, _come here, please, come here._

The boy raises a tiny fist, one finger outstretched. He points, and at first Taeyong thinks he is pointing at him. The kid shakes his head, points to the sky. _Behind you_ , Taeyong understands. Dread pools at the pit of his stomach.

He feels it before he turns around. He doesn’t want to, but he knows that he has to. It is different each time he encounters it, and now it is like a cloud, an invisible one, a space without form or consistency – it is only a feeling, a bit of energy. It is malevolent. Taeyong feels scared, disgusted, revolted all at once. Horrified.

When he looks back, he finds the child gone. The next thing he knows, someone takes him by the arm. His head whips around, and it takes him a moment to recognize the mirrors suddenly in his field of vision.

“Doyoung,” he breathes out. Doyoung doesn’t answer, but tugs at his arm to make him move, away from the sickening energy, but also away from the tunnel. Taeyong tries to stop him. “Wait, wait.”

Doyoung stops, but doesn’t let go of his arm. “What is it?”

“The boy,” Taeyong says quickly, he is wasting time, he needs to go to him. “The tunnel—” He points to the tunnel – but it appears that it had disappeared as well. The dream is changing. Taeyong lost him again.

“Come on,” Doyoung says gently, tugging on his arm again, “We gotta go.”

As they walk, Taeyong notices that with each step they enter a different scene. It’s like it is being constructed as they go, piece by piece. He wonders whether it is Doyoung’s doing. Doyoung is silent beside him.

They step into a room, the ceiling peppered with neon lights. It closes around them, separates them from everything else. Doyoung finally lets go of Taeyong’s arm. “We should be safe here.”

Taeyong is looking at the reflections on Doyoung’s mask. The neon lights dance around, even though around them in the room they are stationary. “What if it follows us?”

“Then we just move again,” Doyoung replies, like it’s obvious.

Taeyong still has the kid on his mind. He always runs away, always tries to escape this thing chasing him. He worries what will happen when it catches up. “What is that thing, anyway?” It is so quiet in the room around them. There is no furniture, no doors or windows. There is nothing except for the walls all around them and the neon lights.

“I don’t know,” Doyoung admits, quietly as well. His voice is fairly melodic and pleasant, Taeyong finds. It feels like a breath of air across his skin. “I’ve never been close enough to find out.”

“It feels wrong somehow,” Taeyong speaks, without really meaning to. It’s like he needs to say so, while the words are at the forefront of his mind. Doyoung seems to know his way around, seems to be able to do so much more than Taeyong ever knew how to achieve here – wherever it is they are right now. Maybe Doyoung can help him save the little boy. “Like it’s evil. When I first encountered it, I thought it was a nightmare, or something similar.”

Doyoung hums. Taeyong watches himself in the mirrors. He wonders if there is a face beneath the mask, and what it looks like. “That sounds about right. I don’t know if it’s a nightmare, but it’s – it’s bad.” Doyoung says, after a moment. “I always ran in the other direction when I saw it coming.”

“Just like he does,” Taeyong breathes out with sudden realization, “He always runs away.”

Doyoung halts, “Who does?”

The lights flicker. Taeyong repeats his grandmothers words, the ones forever ingrained in his mind. “There is a boy here that needs help. I’m convinced he is awake, the way we are.”

Doyoung is silent for a while. “Are you sure?”

Taeyong nods. “I’ve been seeing him since I was able to wake up. My grandmother – she showed me how. She was the one to tell me about him as well.” His chest tightens. He misses her. It’s been a while since he last saw her. “I think he’s stuck here.”

Doyoung is still like a statue, like he’s frozen where he stands. “I’ve never seen him.”

“He always disappears before I can do anything,” Taeyong feels frustration even now, only thinking about it, recalling just how a few minutes ago, he was useless when it mattered. “I don’t – I can’t manipulate the dreams the way you can. But with your ability – I think we could save him.”

Doyoung finally moves, but only to take a single step forward. “Maybe he can’t be saved.” He doesn’t say it in a mean way. He just says it. Like it’s a fact. And maybe he’s right, Taeyong figures – but he also owes it to the boy to attempt to do something.

“I don’t care,” he says, and he means it, “I need to at least try. Will you help me?”

It feels like too long before Doyoung speaks. When he does, his voice is somehow different, though Taeyong cannot place just what it is that makes it so. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll help you.”

That’s all Taeyong needs. He feels hope bloom in his chest. The little boy is going to be okay – with Doyoung’s help, Taeyong is somehow going to make sure of that.

☀️

Taeyong finds himself at a party.

He’s not really sure how he’d gotten there. It seems to him that one second he was heading home to his apartment and playing with Ruby, and the next Yuta was walking beside him to the front door of an obscenely wealthy looking apartment complex uptown.

The building is all silver and metal and glass. Everything in the lobby seems to be see-through, from the walls to the elevator. Yuta ushers Taeyong in first and presses a number as he himself gets in. The elevator shoots upwards, smooth and almost without any noise, only a gentle buzz keeping them company as they make their way up.

Taeyong doesn’t even know whose party they’re attending. After they enter a penthouse suite at the very top of the building, he notices familiar faces in the crowd, but there are no names to connect with them. Some of them recognize him, shoot him greetings and friendly smiles.

Yuta mingles with the crowd so easily it’s like he was born to do so. Taeyong hangs out around him, observes his conversations with people, his flirting with some of them, wonders how is he so naturally good at it all. Yuta has always been easy to approach and talk to. It’s how the two of them too have met.

People talk to Taeyong as well, and he does his best to engage, even if he’s not sure he’s succeeding. At some point Yuta pushes a cup into his hand, and the alcohol helps – for a while. It takes about an hour before Taeyong tires, before the chatter becomes too much to keep up with.

Needing to take a breather, he crosses the room over to a glass sliding door. It opens to a spacious balcony with a seating set and an assortment of potted plants sprayed around the area. There is a handhold mirror on the table, face down.

Taeyong leans against the railing and looks over the city. He is so far up he feels momentarily dizzy. He can see most of the city from his perch, can make out the river sneaking in between buildings. Everything is alight in shades of white and blue and orange, tiny pinpricks scattered over the scene. Taeyong can hear the sound of traffic, the laughing of someone a few floors below, music coming from inside the apartment, but from what he’s seeing, it seems like the city is suspended in a timeless moment, unmoving and still.

Something about the scene feels vaguely familiar. But that’s silly. He’s never been here before.

He hears the balcony door behind him softly open and close, and then there is Yuta’s voice, tempered by the alcohol possibly running through his system, “What are you doing out here?”

Taeyong keeps his eyes on the city before him. “Just needed a minute.”

Yuta comes to stand beside Taeyong, close enough that their elbows knock together when Yuta leans against the railing. “You okay?”

Taeyong keeps himself from sighing. “I’m just tired,” he says, not untrue, “No need to worry.”

From the corner of his eye, Taeyong can see Yuta smile at that, a sad little curl to his lips. A few seconds go by before Yuta says, in a murmur almost like he’s talking to himself, “I always worry about you, though.”

Taeyong isn’t sure if he was meant to hear it, but that doesn’t change the fact that he did, and so he reacts, “You really don’t have to.”

Yuta shrugs, and the smile falls from his face. “Well, if I don’t, who will?”

Somewhere at the far back of his heart, Taeyong feels touched by Yuta’s concern. He also feels like there’s something more to it that he isn’t understanding, but still mostly thinks that Yuta shouldn’t worry so much about him.

He managed to take care of himself so far; he will manage it going forward too. He is not Yuta’s responsibility to take care of. He doesn’t say so out loud, though, but presses his shoulder to Yuta’s instead, silently conveying a message of appreciation.

☀️

Taeyong is walking.

There is a room in front of him. It misses two of its walls; one is completely absent and the other is supported merely by thin metal pipes. There is darkness all around, void and absolute nothing as far as Taeyong can see and beyond, but the room itself is brightly lit, cast in stunning cold light. The ceiling stretches overhead, higher than he’d expect it to.

There is a chair in the middle of the room. There’s a painting on the wall, a closet to the side, a fluffy pink carpet on the floor. Taeyong sits in the chair and waits.

He’s awake, so he realizes it when the surroundings change – when the room shrinks, when the sun starts streaming in through a window to cast light over a bed on which Taeyong finds himself. Everything in the room is bathed in shades of gold and pink and violet, bright and optimistic and lovely, despite the small space.

“There you are,” comes from somewhere behind him, quiet.

Taeyong turns around, already knowing what he’s going to see. Doyoung is always dressed the same way when Taeyong meets him, a black shirt, black pants, black boots, black mask covering his face.

Taeyong says, “I was hoping I’d find you today.”

When Doyoung answers, Taeyong thinks he must be smiling – he is not sure how he knows this, but it’s almost intuitive, almost like something whispers the information right in his ear. “That’s nice, but it was me who found you.”

“Did you?” Taeyong lets out a laugh, and when Doyoung merely nods, he plunges on, “Can you teach me how?” Maybe if Taeyong knew how to seek out people here in this place, maybe he would be able to find the little boy. Maybe he would be able to get to him before the nightmare does, or before he runs away.

“I’m not sure,” Doyoung answers, “It kind of comes naturally to me.”

“Just tell me what you do, when you’re looking for someone here,” Taeyong suggests, not willing to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. “How did you find me now?”

Doyoung is silent for a moment. He hums under his breath, and sits down on the bed next to Taeyong. “I only thought of you, really,” he says. “I wondered if you were asleep. I just wanted to talk to you again.”

Taeyong feels something settle in his chest. “That’s it?”

“Yes. I thought of you, and then I wound up here and saw you,” Doyoung says, and then even quieter, “Sorry I can’t offer more.”

“Well, what about—what about other people?” Taeyong asks.

“I’ve never looked for anyone else.” Doyoung answers, calmly. “You’re the only person that’s awake that I’ve met in years.”

That surprises Taeyong, for some reason. He thought there were more of them here, even though he never met anyone lucid except for his grandma years ago and now Doyoung. But he always figured there would be tens, if not hundreds of them. “Who was the other person?”

Doyoung lets out a sigh. “I don’t know his name. He never told me.” He falls silent for a moment, and Taeyong thinks he won’t say more, when he continues, “He didn’t want to talk to me at first. It took some time to convince him to do so, but he—disappeared, after a few weeks. I never saw him again.”

He speaks with a sort of sadness that makes Taeyong’s chest feel tight. “And then there was no one – until you.”

It’s been weeks since the two of them met, too. Taeyong recalls that first time now, when Doyoung scared him so badly he woke up. And he only wanted to talk. Taeyong wonders how lonely that must be, to come awake in his dreams every night, and have no one to talk to for such a long period of time.

Taeyong doesn’t wake up in his every dream. It’s been coming more easily to him lately, maybe under Doyoung’s steadying influence over the dreamspace, but still the majority of the nights he sleeps without regaining lucidity. Piecing together what Doyoung had so far told him, Taeyong understands that Doyoung must be awake every single night, every single dream he has. He cannot imagine what that must be like. Isn’t that too straining? Too exhausting?

“I won’t disappear,” he tells him, feeling like he needs to. “I can talk to you, whenever you want.”

Taeyong hears a smile in his voice, “I appreciate it.”

Taeyong notices then that the window opened –or the entirety of it just disappeared, rather. There is now an opening in the wall where the glass was previously, and through it Taeyong watches the rain. Wasn’t it sunny just a moment ago? Everything changes so quickly here; no matter how much time Taeyong spends here, it doesn’t get any easier to get used to it.

When he catches himself thinking about this entire thing – how he’s awake within a dream, aware that he’s dreaming – it can get overwhelming, sometimes. Just to look outside a window and see something unexpected – not the usual buildings and apartments and roofs, but a mess of color, scenes out of place, structures that make no sense but still work – it’s incredible.

Taeyong sometimes wonders just how grand the whole place is – how big, how far does it reach? Does it even have a start or an end? It’s stunning and devastating at once – and Taeyong realizes, a very lonely place to be in.

But he is not alone. Doyoung is there with him. He sits right beside him, as the rain and the room reflect in his mirrors; and even silent, he feels so inexplicably present, so _there,_ and for Taeyong, that is more than enough.

“You mentioned your grandmother, before,” Doyoung decides to say, suddenly.

Taeyong is surprised that he remembered such a small thing; he recalls only vaguely that he talked about her. “She was the one that helped me wake up here.”

“So she was like us,” Doyoung states.

Taeyong’s chest always floods with affection, whenever he thinks about her. He recalls the last years of her life – confined to a medical bed, barely able to speak or do anything at all. It was hard to see her in the state, whenever Taeyong would tag along with his mom to visit the hospital, and it was harder to try and communicate – maybe that’s why, despite it all, she found another way.

“She passed away,” he says, _missing her,_ painfully so _,_ “But sometimes I still dream about her.”

He meets her in his dreams still, but it is obvious that it isn’t really her. She is like a projection, flickering, only there to ask him time and time again, _will you help him?_

“It must be your memory of her that the dream keeps alive,” Doyoung explains, voice quiet, somber.

“I guess so,” Taeyong turns that over in his head. “That would make sense.”

They fall silent again. The room changes again, adjusts just the tiniest bit – the window turns to the windowsill of his grandmother’s house; maybe reacting to his memories of her still. There is the solitary plant, the one that she taught Taeyong how to change, if he so willed.

He tries so now, focusing. It usually takes a bit of effort, but he finds that now it’s as easy as a simple thought; the plants changes the color of its leaves from green to red and pink and then a mess of all the colors combined together.

“She taught me how to do that,” Taeyong explains unprompted, feeling the back of his neck heat up in a bit of embarrassment. “It’s not much, but...”

“It’s pretty,” Doyoung says.

Speaking of pretty, Taeyong gets an idea, suddenly. He never tried it when it wasn’t dark in the dream, when it wasn’t night – but he has Doyoung by his side now, so this should be easy. He extends his hand, palm up, focuses his mind – and right there, in the middle of his hand, a star comes to life, like a bud opening into a flower.

It shines with dazzling golden light, bright, beautiful, just as much as the first time he’d seen his grandmother do this. It washes the room out in orange and white, casts both Doyoung and Taeyong in shades of it. Taeyong looks at Doyoung, looking for a reaction – and his mask is alight with a thousand different colors, brilliant and gleaming, reflecting to the walls all around them and painting them in its image, a rainbow of crystal.

“Well,” Doyoung says, and Taeyong thinks he sounds a bit short of breath. “This is something I never thought of trying.”

Taeyong extends the hand with the star to Doyoung, offering. “Keep it.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, he feels stupid – the star is not real. It’s going to dissipate in the world around them as soon as Taeyong’s attention shifts.

But Doyoung reaches for it anyway and let’s Taeyong put it in his own cupped palms.

☀️

Taeyong is at home.

He is by himself, only Ruby keeping him company. It’s the evening, after classes; he came home, ate leftovers, scrolled social media for a while, walked Ruby around the block. He’s sitting on his bed now, bored, not knowing what to do – he texted Yuta about thirty minutes ago, but there’s still no reply.

It starts to rain outside, just a soft splatter against the ground and the windowsill and the glass.

Taeyong turns around, and for a second expects to see someone sitting at the bed next to him. There’s only Ruby, curled up on the blanket. Taeyong scratches her behind the ears, “It’s just you and me, huh?”

Well, of course it is. Who else would there be? He’s being silly.

His phone pings with an incoming message. It’s from Yuta and it says _sorry, i’m out rn, ttyl?_

Taeyong sighs and lets his body fall on the bed. It’s been some time since he last felt so alone.

☀️

Taeyong sits at the bottom of a swimming pool, surrounded on all sides by bright azure water.

He knows it’s a pool, the way these things can be felt in dreams usually, just by intuition alone. When he looks to the sides or in front of him, he cannot see more than the water, no walls in sight. It seems like the expanse of the water is infinite, stretches on and on and on in all directions, limitless.

Taeyong sits still, in complete silence. He moves his hands through the water, languidly, watches as his fingers flow through the space around him. He is breathing slowly and evenly, inhale and exhale.

The water doesn’t feel like water at all, Taeyong comes to realize. He is submerged in it, he cannot even make out the surface when he looks up, that’s how deep in he seems to be. He should be feeling some pressure, he shouldn’t be able to keep his eyes open and look around unrestricted, and he shouldn’t be able to just breathe without any problem, he knows this.

So he knows what that means.

Sometimes the awakening happens so softly he barely notices the shift. It’s like he blinks, and then the world around him comes into sharper focus, shifts just a tiny bit to the side and realigns.

It’s peaceful here, he thinks. Taeyong could swim up or try to change the dream around him, but he figures he doesn’t need to. It’s nice to just stay where he is and sit and _be_. He’s alone, but he revels in it now – he welcomes the tranquil water around him like an old friend.

He doesn’t need to do much of anything here, Taeyong thinks. There is no pressure, no upcoming deadlines, no existential fear hanging over him like a shadow. He wants to stay here, just float along the bottom of this wide expanse, and let life pass him by. It would be nice, to not have so much to worry about all the time; it could be just him and the welcoming dreamspace all around him, changing under his fingertips the way he wants it to.

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices motion. He turns his head to look – and sees someone swimming towards him. The sun reflects off pieces of mirror, as they come closer and closer and closer until Doyoung sits down right in front of him.

“What are you doing?” Doyoung asks him, voice the same as it always is, no matter that they’re supposed to be underwater. “Sitting here all by yourself?”

Taeyong smiles at him. He was glad to be alone, but he is much happier to see him again. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Just the water, and nothing else.”

Curiously, the water isn’t visible in the reflection of the mirrors. “I guess so.” Doyoung says, and after a moment, “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just thinking,” Taeyong answers. “Isn’t it amazing? That we’re in water, but we cannot drown?”

“Is it?” Doyoung replies with a question in kind. “I think I’ve spent so much time here that things like that don’t affect me anymore.”

Taeyong looks over his frame. His clothes do not appear soaked. There’s no real indication that they would be underwater in any way, except for what Taeyong can see with his eyes all around him. “Well, I like it.” He says with a shrug.

It makes Doyoung laugh, just a soft sound at the back of his throat. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” He looks around then – or Taeyong thinks he does. He still cannot see his eyes because of the mask, but Doyoung turns his head to one side and the other just ever so slightly.

At once, the scene starts to change. They stay submerged in water, but they’re no longer sitting in the pool. Instead, he finds that they are sitting on a bench. Next to them, a glass wall materializes, connects with a ceiling that comes into existence just as suddenly. Behind the glass, fish start streaming in, hundreds upon hundreds of them, all sorts of colors and sizes and shapes. Taeyong watches as they swim by, as they slam into the glass. He is sure some of them aren’t even real fish. There is a stingray and a couple of sharks that Taeyong can see swimming in the distance.

When Taeyong hears voices, he turns around. The place he and Doyoung found themselves in seems to be an aquarium, a sort of sea world. There are more people milling about, seemingly appearing out of thin air, talking amongst each other. Taeyong cannot make out anything that they’re saying.

He suddenly realizes that the water around them disappeared. The only water left is behind the glass now, in the giant tank. Taeyong notices a family that comes to stand right in front of the window. They all have their backs turned to him, a mother, a father, and their kid in between. The little boy puts his hand to the glass, like he’s enamored with what’s in front of him.

Taeyong asks Doyoung, “Is this another one of your memories?”

“Part of one,” Doyoung answers. His hasn’t moved once since the dream changed, keeping his posture and his body angled towards Taeyong, like he’s been watching him the entire time. “It’s a real place, though.”

Taeyong looks at him, “The aquarium?”

Doyoung merely nods. Taeyong can see fish swim around in the mirrors, though it looks less like a reflection now than it does like Doyoung’s head is a glass bowl on its own. “It’s a place I’ve visited with my family, once.”

Taeyong vaguely feels like he heard something similar before. Before he can reply, there is a smash to the side, a deafening sound that makes Taeyong spring to his feet. A giant shark, bigger than Taeyong would believe sharks can be, is slamming into the glass wall, trying to break through. The family Taeyong saw before is now scrambling back, terrified. They don’t make a single sound, even though Taeyong can see the mouth of the woman moving.

Doyoung keeps still, sitting on the bench. “Don’t worry,” he tells Taeyong, and after a moment reaches out to take his wrist in his hand, wraps slender fingers around it and tugs him to sit back down, “While I’m here, nothing can hurt you.”

Taeyong considers that in his mind. Doyoung retracts his hand to himself. “Would anything happen if something did, though?” He asks, “Like when I’m awake and something in here kills me, wouldn’t I just... wake up?” It’s not stupid to ask that, is it? Taeyong had died in dreams before. Not too often, and he wasn’t ever lucid when it happened, but it occurred.

Doyoung seems to think it over, before he answers. “I don’t know.”

“But isn’t that what usually happens?”

“I can’t say,” Doyoung answers. “I’ve never died in my dreams before.”

“Not once?” Taeyong asks, unable to keep the disbelieving tone out of his voice.

Doyoung shakes his head no. When he speaks, he does so slowly and carefully. “I’m... I keep the dreams controlled. I am afraid to die here.” There’s something about the way he says it, that Taeyong cannot decipher. He can tell that Doyoung means it honestly, though. Like he is really scared.

Taeyong puts a hand on Doyoung’s shoulder. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like he should comfort him, “Why, though?” He asks, keeping his voice low. “Nothing can really happen to you, can it? You’re only sleeping.”

Doyoung doesn’t answer, instead keeps perfectly still. Taeyong thinks that Doyoung is staring at him, and not for the first time he wishes he could see his eyes, or the expression on his face. It’s hard to figure out what Doyoung is feeling or thinking just based on his words.

Doyoung replies, at last, “I—”

The shark busts in through the wall, hard. Taeyong turns around as if in slow motion, sees the body of the shark barreling at him, and he has only a second to brace for the impact that he knows will follow – but nothing happens. In the blink of an eye, the shark disappears.

“Sorry about that,” Doyoung says, quiet, but sounding more composed than he was a minute ago. “I seem to have lost control over that.”

Taeyong’s heart is hammering in his chest. He barely had enough time to process what was happening, let alone do something about it – and Doyoung changed the dream in a splinter of a second. Taeyong finds that incredible. He’s starting to think that he underestimated the extent of Doyoung’s power over the dreamspace. “It’s amazing that you can keep the control in the first place.” He sounds out of breath even to his own ears, like he’d run a marathon.

“It gets easier with practice, like I said.” Taeyong does recall that as well. But now he thinks there must be more to it than just that – Taeyong also spent time awake in this world. But Doyoung – it seems like he is on a level all of his own. Something Taeyong cannot begin to compare to. Not that he wants to. “You seem to be getting better at this, though. You’re still here.”

That’s true, isn’t it, Taeyong realizes. He didn’t startle awake. He got scared, but he managed to keep his dreaming state. He feels the dream pushing at the fringes of his consciousness, however, but he thinks he can manage to stall it for a little while longer.

He wants to talk to Doyoung more. There is something about the guy that’s so incredibly mesmerizing – it draws Taeyong in, despite his intention. Taeyong barely knows anything about him still, but he feels like he wants to get to know him more. It’s been a while since he felt like this about anyone. It’s both parts scary and exciting, at the same time.

☀️

He’s walking down a long winding city center street.

It’s an uneventful day. Taeyong had class, and decided to go for bubbletea after. A little bit of self-care, he calls it, rationalizes it to himself that he deserves something small and nice after a long, tiring day of lectures.

There is only one place that sells boba that makes their tea to satisfy Taeyong’s standards and taste buds. It’s a bit further from the school he attends, but he figures it’s worth it to walk the extra fifteen minutes to get to it. The weather is nice, not really warm but not cold either, perfect for a short walk.

There is not a single cloud in the sky overhead. The blue of it burns Taeyong’s eyes, if he looks at it too long, unnatural and saturated. It feels like it’s a sky someone might put in a painting.

He weaves through crowds of people. No one pays him any attention. He walks briskly, but not enough to become short of breath. There isn’t really anything on his mind, he is so exhausted.

Bells ring from somewhere in the area, loud and booming, the sound distorted by the distance it has to travel to reach Taeyong’s ears. A bird flies overhead, cuts a direct line across the wide expanse of blue. Taeyong isn’t sure, but he thinks he can hear the flap of its wings as it propels itself forward.

At the end of the street, he can see the tiny bubbletea shop come into view, finally. It is located at the ground level of an apartment building, and Taeyong looks at one of the windows. It appears to be open wide, as there is a white curtain hanging out of it, flapping slightly in the gentle wind outside. It gets sucked back into the room, and for a second, it looks like it catches on a human frame, before it once again flaps uselessly against the windowsill.

Taeyong’s heart feels heavy in his chest. Something feels weird. He cannot really put his finger on it – maybe it is the exhaustion that’s taken root in his veins. He shakes his head, drops his gaze, and walks the remaining few meters to the shop.

He enters. Overhead, a bell chimes, announcing his arrival. The shop appears empty. There aren’t any customers, and as far as Taeyong can see, there is no one behind the counter. He steps further into the shop, and the door closes after him painfully slow, screeching as it does. He turns to watch it, heart racing, pulse deafening in his temples.

It’s quiet inside. He stands frozen in place, looking at the door still after it shuts. A few seconds pass.

He startles when a voice comes from behind him, “How may I help you?”

He turns around. There is a boy behind the counter – young, no more than twenty years old, probably. He wears a uniform with the shop’s logo, a little hat on his head to match. Was he there before? Did Taeyong just not see him, somehow?

The boy raises an eyebrow at Taeyong when Taeyong clears his throat and approaches the counter. He places his order, and the boy goes about preparing it wordlessly. Taeyong pays, takes his drink, and leaves as fast as he can, a lump lodged in his throat that he cannot swallow over.

☀️

Taeyong finds himself alone, and decides to really try to find Doyoung this time.

He closes his eyes. He tries to remember all that Doyoung told him about how he was able to seek out Taeyong in the dreamspace – which, admittedly, wasn’t that much. _I just thought of you._

So Taeyong is thinking of him, right now. About his steady, serene presence. About how he stands so rigidly he makes Taeyong think of sculptures. How he appears so aloof, reserved. How he talks calmly, with great care about what he says. How Taeyong managed to hear his laugh, on rare occasions.

Taeyong thinks he can somehow feel the space around him change, even with his eyes closed. It’s like there’s a space inside his mind that lets him see everything even in total darkness – it’s like a fabric that he runs his metaphorical hands over, shaping it into his liking, smoothing out the wrinkles.

When he opens his eyes again, he finds himself standing inside a theater.

He does not recognize it. He stands in front of the first row of red velvet seats, facing a wide wooden stage. There are curtains drawn, a rich dark red color, fastened with golden ropes. There is a chandelier up above, right in the center.

He turns around, slowly. His eyes rake over the walls adorned with ornaments, luxurious décor, the balconies high above. There are hundreds of seats, reaching so far back into the room the last rows disappear in the darkness.

Doyoung sits in the very middle of the audience.

It’s eerily quiet, as Taeyong makes his way up the stairs. Each of his steps echoes in the room, bounces off the walls. Doyoung doesn’t turn his head to look at him, when Taeyong comes to a stop next to him. “I found you.” He says, unable to keep the satisfied tone out of his voice.

“You did,” Doyoung says, and Taeyong thinks there is a hint of smile accompanying it.

“I didn’t know if it would work,” Taeyong admits as he sits down right next to Doyoung’s seat. “I wasn’t sure if you were sleeping.”

There is a moment of quiet, before Doyoung speaks again. When he does, his voice seems to somehow dissolve into the space around them, low and pleasant. “I’m always sleeping.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m always awake,” Doyoung answers, and the way he says it makes Taeyong want to reach out for him. He doesn’t. “I’m always here.”

Taeyong turns the admission over in his head, and finds that he is not surprised by it at all. He suspected it before, didn’t he? He voices the thoughts out loud, “You’re stuck here, aren’t you,” he lowers his voice as well. It feels like he’s been let in on something important. “Just like the little kid.”

Doyoung doesn’t reply to that. Taeyong watches the reflections of the room on the mirrors of his mask, now so familiar. It’s a beautiful aula, he thinks. “Where are we right now, anyway?”

He looks away from Doyoung then, to survey their surroundings again. He’s not sure if it’s the different perspective, but the room seems bigger than it was when he got there. It’s so vast and empty except for the two of them – but Taeyong doesn’t feel alone.

“I wanted to be a singer, when I was a child,” Doyoung says then, “My mother and father, they took me to see a Broadway play, once. This is the theater where it was held.” He pauses, and adds, “Or what I can remember of it, anyway.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Taeyong notices movement in one of the balconies above. From where he sits, he can make out two figures. They are hidden in shadow, not much more than mere outlines. Taeyong wonders – could that be Doyoung’s family?

Doyoung doesn’t react to them. The two people are motionless, and it appears they are looking toward the stage, though Taeyong cannot be sure. Doyoung doesn’t give any indication that he even sees them.

He ponders over what Doyoung just told him, for a long moment. He asks his next question with a little bit of anticipation. He feels like he misunderstood Doyoung from the very beginning. He feels like he should have asked about it sooner. “Doyoung,” he feels like he should whisper, “How much time exactly did you spend here?”

“I cannot really tell,” Doyoung answers, and something about it makes Taeyong’s heart ache. There is a sadness to the words so vast Taeyong doesn’t know what to make of it or how to begin to deal with it. “Long enough for time to lose any meaning.”

Taeyong once again wishes he could see Doyoung’s face. He wants to offer comfort, though, so he reaches out and puts his hand on Doyoung’s shoulder. Doyoung doesn’t pull away, so Taeyong keeps his hand in place. He thinks he feels warmth emanating from under Doyoung’s shirt, like he’s really there – even if sometimes it feels like Doyoung is the dreamiest thing in the whole dreamspace. “It must have been lonely,” he says. “Having no one to talk to.”

And then, finally, Doyoung looks at him. Taeyong gets a full face of mirrors, but none that would reflect his face. “It was,” Doyoung breathes out, and then after a moment, “But now I have you.”

Taeyong’s chest fills with feeling, and he lets his mouth turn up in a smile.

“That’s why I ran after you, the first time I saw you.” Doyoung continues, “The last time I met someone who was awake... it could have been years. I just wanted to talk.”

Taeyong understands him. “I’m glad you did.” He means it, every syllable of it. Taeyong came to regard Doyoung as a friend, and without realizing so he came to care for him. Now that he learned what he did – that Doyoung is forced to stay asleep, awake in a place where everyone else is dreaming, when they are unable to interact with him in any sensible way – he feels like he needs to do anything that he can to help Doyoung as well. Maybe he can save him and the kid both.

At the very least, he figures he needs to give his all to try.

“Can I ask one more question?” It feels like as good a time as any to try, Taeyong figures. Doyoung has been forthcoming with the answers, maybe he can spare another one. When Doyoung nods for him to go on, he says, “Why do you wear the mask?”

Doyoung takes his time to reply, but Taeyong is starting to understand it is only to gather his thoughts before he speaks. “It’s better that I do. Easier.” He starts. “Sometimes I meet my family, when they’re dreaming. It’s better that they don’t see my face.”

“Why?” Taeyong asks, “Wouldn’t they be happy to see you?”

Doyoung heaves a sigh. Taeyong feels it in the hand he still has on Doyoung’s shoulder. “Not always.”

“Okay,” Taeyong says, not willing to push him further if it’s something he doesn’t want to talk about just yet. He chances a look to the balcony he was looking up at before, and notices that the figures are gone. “How about now, though?” He turns back to Doyoung. “There’s no one here, except for me. You don’t need to keep it on, if you don’t want to.”

For a moment it seems like Doyoung will ignore it. He doesn’t move. It’s like he’s deliberating – maybe considering his options. If he doesn’t want people – his family – to see him, Taeyong understands the hesitation. But it’s only the two of them right now, and it’s not like Doyoung can’t just put the mask back on, when other people appear. He waits with baited breath for Doyoung to make a decision.

Taeyong’s stomach tingles, when Doyoung reaches for the bottom of the mask with both his hands. His movement is slow, like he’s still not sure he’s going to take it off, but only until his fingers wrap around the fabric at the base of his throat.

He yanks the mask off in one smooth motion. Taeyong’s heartbeat is lodged somewhere between his mouth and his chest, as his eyes rake over black hair, sharp features, milky skin. Strands of Doyoung’s hair fall into his eyes, just a tad bit too long. He looks straight at Taeyong – and his eyes are pitch black and intense like they’re burning.

Taeyong realizes, belatedly, that his hand is still on Doyoung’s shoulder. He retracts it, not quite sure how he’s feeling currently. He breathes out, “Hi.”

Doyoung gives him a smile. “Hey.”

The light in the room turns off, plunging them into darkness.

A second goes by. Two. Three. Taeyong cannot see a single thing. “What’s going on?”

Doyoung’s voice carries over from beside him, and maybe it’s silly, but for a second Taeyong worried he would have disappeared and is relieved to find that he didn’t. “I think the play is about to start.”

“The one you saw with your parents?”

Doyoung laughs, just a puff of air, “Oh, no. I don’t remember that one much now.”

Taeyong watches as light returns to the room again, this time coming directly from the stage. He tries to, but he cannot find the light source – before it was the chandelier, but now it seems like the illumination is coming right from the floor and the walls. It reaches until the first few rows of seats.

On the stage, something incredible happens. Taeyong squints his eyes against the light, but even then he is unable to really tell what is going on, everything changes shapes so quickly. He does see props, but soon they shift their shapes and turn into something else altogether, something that either fits into the scene or doesn’t make any sort of sense. It’s like watching a movie, of sorts, if movies were only made up of disconnected flashes of different sets and colors.

“What is that?” he asks, lost.

“It’s a dream,” Doyoung answers, “In its purest form.”

“I thought everything around us was a dream.”

“It is, but I‘m keeping conscious control of it, so it doesn’t become chaos. This whole place... it transforms itself as a mirage of the minds of everyone that comes here. Imagination and memory and subconscious thought, all merging into one.” Doyoung gestures to the stage with one fluid motion. “This is what it looks like when there’s no one to separate the pieces from each other.”

Taeyong tries to follow the images as they go on and on and on, but he is unable to watch for more than a minute or two. Looking at it for too long, it feels like his eyes are about burst out of their sockets.

“It’s hard to look at, kinda,” he says, turning away, instead choosing to look at Doyoung. “And I’m not really sure what any of it is supposed to be.”

“Oh,” Doyoung smiles at him. “It can be anything you wish it to be.”

Taeyong thinks about that, and finds that the idea isn’t as alluring as it was when he first met Doyoung, however long ago. “I don’t know,” he says quickly surveying the theater around them. It appears that the walls have started to slowly become grown over by vines and roots and flowers. “I like this better. Here with you.”

“If I’m honest,” Doyoung says, and now finally Taeyong is able to see the little hint of amusement, of happiness in his eyes. “I do too.”

☀️

ii) sun

🌙

Doyoung keeps the mask off his face, the next time they meet.

Taeyong appreciates that. It makes his chest flood with warmth to know that Doyoung would do that for him – that he trusts him enough to keep it off. Doyoung is walking towards him, so Taeyong takes the while to look over him again, over his features that he didn’t get to see so well in the dim light of the theater before.

Doyoung is smiling at him, as he walks towards him, like he’s happy to see him. Taeyong directly mirrors him, waits until he stops just in front of him, and for a silent, tranquil moment they only look at each other. Taeyong’s gaze is flickering over Doyoung’s face still, committing it to memory even though he knows he won’t be able to remember it when he wakes up.

It feels like something had changed between them, shifted. Taeyong doesn’t know if it’s the fact that he can now see Doyoung’s face, when for so long he could only look at mirrors and reflections, or if it’s the knowledge of all that Doyoung shared with him, trusted him to know.

Something bubbles up within Taeyong, from his gut it travels up through his chest, his throat, and comes out as, “I like this better, seeing your face. The mask was a bit scary.”

Doyoung breaks the eye contact, in the end, but he doesn’t step away from Taeyong. He murmurs, “Well, don’t get too used to it.” If Taeyong didn’t know better, he’d think there is blush adorning Doyoung’s cheeks.

Oddly, just then, he reminds Taeyong of Yuta. That realization brings with it a complicated feeling – because Taeyong doesn’t reciprocate Yuta’s feelings, even if he regrets that it is so. But Doyoung isn’t Yuta, and right here, right now, Taeyong is standing so close to him it’d be so easy to reach out and touch him; and somehow, he thinks that maybe, _maybe_ Doyoung would let him.

Taeyong notices that it started raining around them. That in itself isn’t strange, as it’s been raining in his dream before, but this makes him pause and derails his train of thought – it rains upwards.

It makes him let out an incredulous laugh. He puts his hand out, but he cannot feel the droplets against his skin. “I can’t feel it.”

“It’s not real,” Doyoung reminds him gently, though he too extends his hand to let the droplets break against his skin.

“Weird,” Taeyong drops his hand, and looks back at Doyoung to find his hair matted to his face with the rain, “Fascinating, but weird.”

Taeyong only then survey the rest of their surroundings – it appears they’ve moved, or the dream reconstructed itself around them. Outside of the circle of backwards rain, there is a field – reminiscent of a scene from an apocalyptic movie. The land is barren, rocky, grey and dark; and then, in the distance, something shines, a bright blue and red in color, in a rough inverted V-like shape, like a door or a portal.

“What is that?” he asks, pointing in its direction.

Doyoung looks at it, and shrugs his shoulders, “I don’t know.” And then, like an afterthought, “Wanna find out?”

When Taeyong turns back to him, he finds Doyoung’s eyes on his face, wide and pretty and almost like they’re uncertain. Taeyong watches as Doyoung offers him his hand, palm up, meaning clear – and waits.

There’s no reason not to, Taeyong figures. It’s only a dream, after all – whatever that thing out there is, they can check it out and see it for themselves if the dream doesn’t decide to change before they get close enough to do so.

“Sure,” he says, and takes Doyoung’s hand in his, and where before he couldn’t feel the rain he now certainly feels Doyoung’s fingers between his, palm against palm and thumb against his knuckles. “Why not.”

And hand in hand, with Taeyong’s heart soaring somewhere above him, they set out.

🌙

It’s eleven in the evening. Taeyong is outside, walking Ruby around the block, close to the apartment. It’s dark outside already, only illumination coming from the lampposts by the sidewalk.

Taeyong is walking slowly, lazily, letting Ruby do her own thing. His mind is wiped clean, exhausted as he is still – lately it’s been getting worse, he thinks. School is hell and there is always so much to do that he can’t catch a proper break, but on top of it all he’s been waking up with migraines recently, for reasons he cannot understand.

There is the sound of Yuta’s voice, somewhere in the far recess of his mind, _maybe you should talk to someone about it._

Ruby barks suddenly, just a single yap that echoes down the street. They have reached the corner of a building. Taeyong looks to his left down the road, and finds it bathed in darkness, like all the lampposts on that particular street all stopped working at once.

Ruby stands rigid, facing the dark street. Her eyes are trained on something within that pitch black that Taeyong cannot possibly see. “What is it, girl?” He asks her, voice just a tad above a whisper. “What do you see?”

Ruby starts growling, low in her throat. Taeyong takes a step back. Not away from her, no. There’s something about the street, about the darkness, that makes his hair stand on edge – it’s just a street, he knows this. But there’s something – at the edge of his mind, a realization waiting to be let out of its confines, and it’s like he felt like this before. Scared of something far off in the distance that he couldn’t see but could _feel_ , something vile and hurtful and unstoppable.

He tugs on Ruby’s leash, “Let’s go.” She doesn’t budge. She stays rooted in place, still growling. He tugs again, harder this time, “Ruby, come on.”

She ignores him. Taeyong’s heart is racing a mile a minute. He’s not usually so scared – not of anything, really – but it’s like his body reacts on its own. It’s like it’s telling him, _there’s a reason you should be afraid,_ but he just cannot figure out what the reason is.

He scoops Ruby up into his arms, glad that she’s such a small dog. He runs with her in his hold all the way to the apartment building.

He feels distraught, when he goes into the apartment. He turns the light on in each room, and sits on his bed not really understanding what just happened. He’s kinda freaked out, he realizes. He looks Ruby over, gets her attention and makes sure that she’s out of her trance or whatever that even was – she’s never behaved like that. It was so fucking weird, and Taeyong feels like he’s going to be sick.

He takes his phone into his hands and presses call before he can think it through. Yuta picks up after a few rings. A short conversation takes place between them, Taeyong asks Yuta to come over. It’s late, he knows, he apologizes for calling so unexpectedly – he cannot even explain why he’s freaked out, because he himself doesn’t know. He knows one thing, though. He doesn’t want to be alone tonight.

Yuta agrees to sleep over at his place, and he arrives half an hour later. They stay up a bit, just talking, not really mentioning the reason why Taeyong called Yuta over so suddenly. It’s not that weird though, Taeyong reasons with himself. They’re best friends. They used to have sleepovers all the time. He likes to spend time with Yuta.

It’s maybe three am when they decide to turn in for the night. Yuta insists on sleeping on the couch, so Taeyong gives him a pillow and his softest, warmest blanket and retreats to his own room. After a second of deliberating, he decides to leave the door open. He settles under the covers, cuts the light, and blinks into the darkness that he’s plunged into. His heart spikes, just once, but he’s not as afraid as he was a few hours ago.

Yuta is just in the next room. Ruby jumps onto the bed and settles down next to his legs. He’s okay. He’s safe.

🌙

Yuta begs him to stop, but it’s like Taeyong doesn’t hear him at all.

“You‘re my best friend,” Taeyong tells him, like that makes it okay, like it explains all that Taeyong is doing. Like it makes it alright that Taeyong is enjoying all of it.

Yuta’s sobs don’t really reach Taeyong’s ears.

He moves slowly, fascinated with the sight before him. Yuta can’t move. Taeyong, with one hand, takes a pinch of Yuta’s skin, starting at the tip of his finger, and pulls. It gives way easily, supple, tears away from muscle as smoothly as if he is plucking a petal off a flower.

He pulls the bit of skin up, up Yuta’s arm, watches as it leaves a ridge of red in its wake. It bleeds, and the rest seeps through Yuta’s clothes, droplets of blood fall to the floor.

He doesn’t really know how his mind makes the jump, but the next thing he wants to do is simple. He tears Yuta’s body apart, joint by joint, working calmly and methodically. He discards the pieces of his body to the side, no use for them when they’re not connected to the rest of it.

It only starts to sink in as he gets to the severed head. When he holds it in his grip by the hair and surveys Yuta’s open, frightened eyes, the blood that flows out of the neck. It comes to him slowly, like he’s swimming to the surface for a breath of fresh air.

Dread pools in his stomach, when he awakens and realizes what he just did. He feels sick, like he wants to throw up – he’s still holding Yuta’s head, why is he still holding his head? Yuta is looking at him, not dead yet. He looks like he always does in his dreams – like he’s far, far off with his mind, like he doesn’t see anything at all. And yet, as Taeyong retches, Yuta speaks like he’s present, like he’s there. “Please,” he says, “Please end it.”

“I’m sorry,” Taeyong manages to wheeze out, terrified, “I didn’t mean to.”

“Please,” is all Yuta says, and he repeats it, over and over and over until Taeyong cannot listen to it anymore, and obliges to his pleas. He smashes the head on the ground, watches it splutter in a puddle of crimson, stomps and stomps and stomps on it until the shape is unrecognizable.

He is shaking. He feels like he cannot breathe. He’s revolted – what did he just do? Why did he do it?

There is a touch to his shoulder, light, familiar, “Taeyong.”

He startles, looks over. He comes face to face with Doyoung, without the mask this time. How long had he been there? Did he see everything that Taeyong did? The pieces of Yuta’s body – all of them – aren’t there anymore, like nothing had happened at all. But it did. Taeyong did it.

“Hey, hey,” Doyoung takes a step closer, “Look at me. It’s okay.”

But it’s not. None of it is – he keeps thinking about how he enjoyed what he was doing and he feels sick, grossed out, ashamed of himself.

He wants to wake up. He wants to get out of there, he cannot stand to stay there a second longer. He closes his eyes, it’s only a dream, it’s only a dream, _it’s not real_. Wake up.

He opens his eyes. He’s in his room. He cannot move his body. By the end of the bed, there stands Yuta, like a statute, just a pale ghost within the darkness.

“Taeyong.”

He speaks, but his mouth doesn’t move. Taeyong realizes, as he takes a better look, that his face is shed of all its skin, red and raw and oozing.

“You will pay, for what you did.” Yuta tells him, and Taeyong wants to scream, in fear or anguish or both, he doesn’t know – but he’s rooted in place, back stuck to the bed.

Taeyong opens his eyes, again. He’s in his room. He’s shaking, and Yuta is beside him, shaking him awake by the shoulder. He sounds frantic. “God, Taeyong, wake up, come on.”

Taeyong sits up, abruptly, putting as much space as he can between them. He falls off the bed and onto his knees, hard, but he doesn’t care. His bedside table lamp is turned on, casting long shadows along the walls.

Taeyong feels like he wants to cry. He curls in on himself, puts his head in his hands, and focuses on breathing.

He can hear Yuta’s voice, from the other side of the bed, “You’re okay. It was only a bad dream.”

Yeah, that’s what it was, Taeyong realizes. He cannot remember what he dreamt about, not in detail, not enough to know why he feels like this – there was blood, maybe, there was Yuta, and Taeyong – couldn’t wake up, but he wanted to, so so desperately, and he feared that he wouldn’t be able to.

Is he awake now? How can he know?

“Taeyong?” Yuta still speaks softly, maybe afraid to startle him, but there is an edge to it, something pitiful. Taeyong is already startled. It feels like his body will never stop trembling.

“Sorry,” he says, doesn’t even know what he’s sorry for, but feels like he needs to say it anyway.

“Hey, man, you didn’t do anything,” Yuta quickly replies. He carefully crosses the room, and Taeyong doesn’t shy away from his touch now when Yuta takes him by the arm and helps him up to sit on the bed. “Hey.”

“Yeah,” he croaks out, still shaky.

“You’re alright,” Yuta puts an arm around his shoulders, “You’re okay.”

It takes a while, but Taeyong calms down. Yuta’s presence helps – he offers comfort that Taeyong is glad for. He wonders how Yuta knew to wake him up, was he making a scene in his sleep? He wants to ask, but there is a lump in his throat that he cannot swallow around. It’s a good thing that Yuta slept over, though, he thinks.

He sends Yuta back to the couch to sleep, after he stops feeling like he’s gonna vomit. Yuta seems unsure, but Taeyong persuades him, tells him he’ll keep the light on, the door open. Yuta retreats to the couch, and Taeyong lies back down, with no intention of going back to sleep. He plays games on his phone until the morning, and then he and Yuta have breakfast and pointedly don’t talk about what happened that night, even though Taeyong can tell it’s the only thing on both their minds.

🌙

Taeyong can’t sleep.

His insomnia isn’t that unusual. He suffers from bouts of it, at times; not able to fall asleep hours after he lies down in bed and closes his eyes, waking up earlier than he usually would. But it’s never been like this, before – he never woke up because he was afraid to sleep, because he was afraid of what he would dream of and what state he would find himself in in the middle of the night or in the morning. He jerks awake each time he manages to black out, his heart beating bruises to the inside of his chest.

The upside is that he doesn’t dream. The downside is that the irregular sleep – just the winks of it that he gets – make him tired, more so than ever before. He cannot pay attention in class, or to what his friends say out of class. They have to snap him out of these dazes he finds himself in, mind somewhere far far away. He catches Yuta sending him concerned glances, but Yuta doesn’t say anything, maybe too exhausted himself of always trying, when he knows that Taeyong won’t listen.

They still haven’t talked about that night. They haven’t really talked at all, after Yuta left his apartment that morning. Taeyong cannot help but feel Yuta is trying to distance himself, but he figures he can’t blame him for it.

A few weeks pass. It gets increasingly harder and harder for Taeyong to get any sleep at all; he survives on a few minutes of oblivion each night, and the rest he compensates with energy drinks and coffee. It’s easier to stay awake, alert, than want to sleep but be unable to and seized with fear each time he tries to close his eyes at all.

Yuta still sits beside him in class, watches him shoot the energy drinks back, holding his tongue. Taeyong can tell that he wants to say something but is keeping it in; he has half a mind to snap at him to just spit it out.

One day they’re sitting at a boring lecture. Taeyong slept maybe four hours during the past five days. He’s starting to see shadows out of the corners of his eyes, blacker than black and creeping around walls and chairs and all over his body.

He feels faint, weak, light. He hasn’t properly eaten in a few days. It’s a chore to even travel from one place to another, to even stand on his wobbly legs. He doesn’t even know how he manages to go to school and get back home.

It stinks inside his apartment, he realizes as soon as he goes in. It takes him a moment to figure out why, what’s wrong and out of place – the stench seems to be everywhere, surrounds him in the small hallway. He steps into something, the floor is wet. And then it comes to him.

“Oh, god, Ruby,” he calls out for his dog, hidden somewhere inside the apartment. He forgot to walk her in the morning, and he cannot remember if he walked her the previous day at all, god, what is he doing – “Ruby, come on, girl, we’re going for a walk.”

She appears in the doorway, then. He puts on her collar, with difficulty coordinating his limbs, they feel so heavy – have they always felt like that? He manages to stand and walk out again, Ruby trailing obediently after him. He takes it slow around the apartment building, letting her do her thing in the grass.

He looks down the street. There aren’t any cars, currently. Taeyong cannot tell how late it is. There’s still some light left in the sky. He blinks, and he thinks he sees something in front of him, faint and see-through, like an apparition or a ghost – a figure, still and frozen in the middle of the road, all black from head to toe, something glinting in the place of their face.

It feels – it feels like what? He cannot think. He wants to sleep, he wants to sleep so badly, he cannot keep his eyes open any longer.

Ruby barks, and Taeyong flinches with his entire body. Right, he’s walking Ruby, they need to go back. He hopes they’ve been out long enough for her to last until morning.

Back in his apartment, he takes an old shirt he can find nearby and goes to clean up the piss. As he leans over, his head spins and he loses balance, almost falling face first into the mess on the floor. He manages to catch himself and lower himself, feels cold and wet seep through the jeans on his ass when he sits. He leans back against the hallway wall and breathes out, almost a sob.

It’s so easy for his eyelids to flutter closed. It’s the easiest thing he’s ever done. And yet just that one simple thing makes fear rise up in his chest, choking him. He wants to sleep, but he’s still so deeply terrified of it he cannot let himself.

He forces his eyes open. They burn. It would be so easy to fall back and slip into the darkness that so patiently, serenely awaits him.

His mind feels fuzzy, like it’s been stuffed full of cotton candy. It takes the very last bits of Taeyong’s will for him to take his phone out of his jacket’s pocket.

Yuta’s voice rings out in his ears, and Taeyong holds onto it like a lifeline. _Maybe you should talk to someone about it._

His fingers feel stiff and numb, but he finds the number he’s looking for and presses call.

🌙

The waiting room outside the office is clean, minimalistic. There is only a single table, silver in color, and four white armchairs around it. There are magazines on the table, neatly arranged in a pile. There is a big painting on the wall right behind where Taeyong is sitting, a landscape piece in muted, earthy tones. In the picture there is a lake, a forest behind it, a moon above.

In front of Taeyong, there is a clock mounted to the wall. It ticks by, second by gruesome second, loud in the silence that feels ingrained in the room. The only other thing on the wall is a placate next to the door, on which Taeyong’s sister’s friend’s name is engraved in gold letters, and under it in a smaller font, _specialist._

He arrived earlier than he was supposed to, so he waits, recalling the phone call with his sister the previous night just to have something else to focus on than the oppressing quiet that surrounds him on all sides.

She told him to wait until she comes over, but Taeyong was afraid what would happen in the meantime, so they talked on the phone the entire time it took her to get to the apartment. In a way, it was easier for him to talk this way, to confess to his problems, to come to terms with the fact that he needed someone to help him, even though he thought he could do it alone.

She listened in silence, only asking questions at times, like the good doctor that she was: how long was this going on, are there any other symptoms he can think of, does he use any substances or drugs or medicine, that kind of stuff. Taeyong told her about the dreams, the ones he cannot fully remember, the ones that remain only in flashes and feelings in his memory, the ones that feel like they are real; and about the last one, the catalyst, the nightmare.

She will refer him to a friend of hers, she told him when she arrived in his apartment, and after she helped him clean up the hallway. A really great guy, he will be able to help, okay?

So Taeyong agreed, and lied unmoving on his couch while she made a few calls, setting up a meeting for him. She managed to get him in for the next morning at ten, the earliest her friend could allow. She stayed with him during the night, talking in low voices in his living room.

The door to the office opens, and voices carry over to Taeyong, one loud and cheery and the other soft and calm. The cheerier one says, “Thanks, man, I’ll let you know how it goes.”

A boy steps out of the door, snapback on his head, backpack on his shoulder.

“You got this, Mark, you can do it.” The other voice says, and the owner of it also comes into view, a guy with rose gold hair, cheeks so soft they remind Taeyong of peaches.

“We’ll see,” Mark laughs, and the two of them do a handshake before embracing each other. Then Mark detaches himself, and salutes the other with two fingers to his head, “Alright, see you next week!”

The other guy watches him walk down the hallway with a big smile on his face for a second, and then he turns to Taeyong. The smile never falters. “Taeyong, right? I’m Jaehyun, Kun’s assistant. Nice to meet you.” Taeyong hastily stands up, and hurries to shake the man’s hand. His grip is gentle, warm. “Come on in, we will see you now.”

Taeyong walks into the room, with certain difficulty. His sister made him sleep, and he managed to for a few hours before he inevitably woke up with a tremble in his bones, but he’s still so tired, so completely out of it. It’s a miracle he even managed to get here to the office at all.

The inside of the office is similar in style to the waiting room, but it isn’t as neat. There are objects everywhere – papers, pens, files, magazines, books. To the side, there is a little bit of an aisle, and a sink, like a tiny kitchen area. Along the walls, there are cabinets, and a desk by the window opposite the door. In the middle of the room there is a sofa, with soft looking pillows and a blanket, a table in front of it, and an armchair to the side.

“Hi, my name is Qian Kun, it’s nice to meet you,” the other man in the room says to him, even though of course Taeyong knows who he is, his sister told him. Kun gestures to the couch, “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

Taeyong sits down, stiff and awkward. Kun eyes him, not unkindly, and gives him a smile. Taeyong can see Jaehyun going to the counter in the corner.

Kun sits down in the armchair, crosses his legs. “Do you mind if we talk informally? I find that it is easier.” When Taeyong shakes his head no, Kun adds, “Great. Call me Kun, then. Shall we get started?”

There is a clipboard in his lap, a pen in hand. Taeyong just nods, not really knowing what to say, or where to begin. Jaehyun brings Taeyong a cup of tea, sets it gently on the table in front of him, before retreating to sit behind the desk.

“Your sister told me what she believed the problem was,” Kun says, “But I would like to hear from you, again, what happened.” Taeyong takes in a breath, looks at his hands in his lap. Kun, maybe picking up on his hesitation, adds, “Share with me as much as you’re willing to. At your pace.”

Taeyong nods and starts talking. He tells Kun all that he told his sister, the night before. While he speaks, Kun scribbles something onto the papers few times, taking notes. He asks Taeyong questions when Taeyong falls silent, unsure how to continue. He asks about Taeyong’s life, his habits, day-to-day routine. He asks about family, friends, university. Does he feel stressed, anxious, depressed; has anything happened lately to upset him?

Only the dream, Taeyong says. It was only that one dream.

“What was it about?” Kun asks.

“I don’t...” Taeyong sighs, “I don’t remember.”

Kun’s pen over the paper stills. “Then how do you know that it was upsetting?”

“I just know,” Taeyong breathes out. It’s so hard to explain this – the feeling that seeps into his bones.

Kun writes a line. “How about your other dreams?”

Taeyong tells him, as much as he can recall, all the disjointed images, the impressions, the Hongdae street, the moon above water, the mirrors.

They only have an hour. Kun has more appointments, more patients coming in. Five minutes before the end of their session, Kun gives him a prescription for medicine that, he claims, should help him get rest.

He notices the unsure, afraid look on Taeyong’s face. “I want you to try. Okay? I know it’s scary. But you have to sleep, Taeyong. You won’t last much longer if you don‘t.” Taeyong knows that he is right, that his health is on the line, but that doesn’t help in any way ease the way his stomach turns even at the prospect of sleeping now. “I only want you to try. If you can’t – then you can’t, and we’ll figure something else out. But for today, try. Alright?”

Taeyong nods, “Okay.”

“Call me, if you need to,” Kun tells him, so kind Taeyong aches with it. “Whenever you need to.”

Before he leaves, Jaehyun stops him, gives him a warm smile and a paper with more than one number written on it: Jaehyun – home, Jaehyun – personal phone, Kun – home, Kun – personal phone.

Taeyong carefully stores it in his pocket.

🌙

He is sitting at the edge of his bed an hour later, small white pill in the cup of his palm.

He doesn’t want to do it. He realizes that his fear is irrational. That it doesn’t make any sense, to be scared of something even though he cannot remember what it is. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

He also understands that there isn’t any way around it. Kun might have said they would figure something out, but Taeyong isn’t so stupid as to think it will be that easy. He needs to get through this. He needs to sleep.

And that decides it. Despite the heart lodged in his throat, he swallows the pill down, he puts himself to bed, and with dread spreading over his bones he allows himself to close his eyes and be pulled under.

🌙

He knows he’s dreaming as soon as he opens his eyes within his mind.

Everything around him comes into sharp focus. He finds himself in a spacious room. Right there in the middle, between four white thick pillars, stands an empty chair on a raised dais. All around him the room is divided into sections – one where flowers and plants grow over the floor and the walls, another one with only a window and nothing else around, another that reminds Taeyong of the inside of a church, gold adorning the walls in ornaments, a window of a colorful mosaic.

Memory comes to him at once. His last time here, his previous dreams, the kid.

Doyoung.

He can’t believe it’s been so long since they last talked. It’s been only a couple of weeks, but it still feels like forever; and here, where time doesn’t really mean a single thing, how long did Doyoung spend alone, once again?

Taeyong’s fear, the thing that stopped him from falling asleep, that kept him prisoner of his days; it seems so distant now. Taeyong has got a duty, he has a purpose, he needs to be here – why did he think he didn’t want to go back?

There is a rustle behind him, just a tap of shoes on the floor. Taeyong knows it’s him before he even turns around.

Doyoung stands by the window, bathed in gold light coming in through the panes. It frames him in honey, like a halo, an aura of holiness around him. He has his mask on, and the mirrors shine with the sunlight, even though Doyoung is not facing the source. The sight makes Taeyong’s breath catch in his throat.

Taeyong walks towards him, just a couple of steps. Doyoung stands so stiffly, rigid, a rock in the midst of the sea.

Doyoung speaks first, “I thought you were gone.”

Taeyong nearly flinches. It doesn’t sound accusing, not in any way, but Taeyong still hears it that way. He wants to see Doyoung’s face, his eyes, his expression – wants to know what he’s really thinking, despite his words. “I’m sorry.” He says, “I didn’t mean to leave. I don’t really know what happened, the last time.”

Finally, Doyoung shifts his unnaturally still position, but only to lean against the wall next to him. “You had a nightmare,” Doyoung explains, tone void of any inflection at all, flat and low. “I couldn’t get to you quick enough to prevent it.”

Taeyong nods, but it’s not really Doyoung’s fault, anyway. Neither of them could have expected something like that to happen when it did.

“I told you that I won’t disappear,” he tells Doyoung then, reminds him of his words. He might not remember them in the real word when he wakes, but he intends to keep them anyway. “I meant it.”

“I want to believe you,” Doyoung answers, and now his voice is full of so much emotion, so much meaning that Taeyong cannot begin to understand all at once.

Taeyong reaches for his mask, curls his fingers into the hem. He pauses for a moment, but Doyoung doesn’t push him away nor does he react at all. Taeyong takes the mask off him, gently. Doyoung looks to the side, hangs his head down, like he doesn’t want Taeyong to see him. Taeyong responds, “Why don’t you?”

It’s easy now, to figure out what Doyoung is thinking; his eyes betray him. Taeyong finds them beautiful and fascinating, black and shiny like water during the night, just as cold. Doyoung seems to be thinking it over, so Taeyong waits for him to speak. When he does, Taeyong’s chest seizes. “Because you can leave, if you want,” Doyoung murmurs, “And I can’t.”

Taeyong has never been so sure of anything in his life, “You will. I’ll help you. Doyoung,” he calls for him, to get him to look at Taeyong, because he wants him to see that he isn’t lying. “I’ll do all that I can.”

Their eyes meet, and Taeyong can tell that Doyoung isn’t sold on it just yet, but he doesn’t back down. He meets Doyoung’s eyes right on, wills him to trust him.

In the end, Doyoung’s face changes, the entirety of it transforms; the corners of his mouth turn up. “I missed you,” he says, “It was boring here without you.”

Taeyong smiles back. He missed him too.

🌙

“What I would like you to do,” Kun tells him, over the sound of rain coming through the open window, “is to start writing a dream journal.”

Taeyong blinks, “Dream journal?”

Kun nods, “Yes. I think your dreams are the key to everything that’s going on with you.” He explains, “Every morning when you wake up, I want you to write down all that you can remember, every single detail that you can recall, no matter how trivial or insignificant it seems.”

Taeyong reaches for his tea on the table in front of him, the one Jaehyun prepared for him this time as well. “Why?”

“I thought about it,” Kun taps the pen in his hand against his leg, “And I think we can create a bigger picture from the pieces. There’s just something about it. You said it yourself, you feel like they’re important, don’t you?”

Taeyong did. He doesn’t know _why_ they’re important, though. He’s supposed to do something, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot figure out what it might be. “You could say that.”

“We can figure it out,” Kun says, “How have you been sleeping, this past week?”

The truth is, Taeyong slept really well. The day of their first session, a week ago, he slept nearly a full twenty-four hours. He only woke up because he was hungry, but he woke up rested, and feeling good – something he didn’t feel in a while. He’s also starting to lose the fear. “The pills help.”

“Good,” Kun hums, “It’s not a permanent solution, but for now it’ll do.”

Taeyong likes Kun. He likes Jaehyun, too. Taeyong sent Jaehyun a curt message after waking, informing him that he used the medicine and slept; and Jaehyun sent a message back, telling him he was glad that it worked, asking how Taeyong felt, if he needed to talk. It was so unexpected, but so nice; so Taeyong called him, and they talked for a few hours, about Taeyong and his sleep but also about Jaehyun, about Kun and then about anything at all.

Things with Yuta have also started to shift back to normal, Taeyong thinks. Yuta, noticing Taeyong’s absence in class two days in a row, went to his place to check on him. Taeyong explained what happened, filled him in on as many details as he could, and it seemed like Yuta was genuinely happy for him for getting help. Taeyong thinks he himself is happy with that decision as well.

He called his sister, too. Just to let her know he was gonna be okay.

The hour of the session spent, Taeyong gets up, ready to leave. Kun reminds him, “Don’t forget to bring the journal with you, next week. We’ll go through it, see what we find.”

“Alright,” Taeyong laughs. “See you then.”

Jaehyun follows him out of the door, quietly shutting it after himself. The waiting room is currently empty. “Taeyong, wait.”

“What is it?” Taeyong stops in his tracks and turns around to face him, one eyebrow raised.

Jaehyun laughs and rubs the back of his neck with one hand, like he’s shy. “Do you have time, this Saturday?”

Taeyong doesn’t have any plans yet. “I guess. Why?”

“There’s this convention that I’d like to go to,” Jaehyun explains, “But Kun isn’t interested to join me. Well, none of my friends are, really, but I figured you might be. You like video games.”

Taeyong heard of the convention – he was planning on going himself, but he forgot about it in the meanwhile. “Oh.”

“You can call your friend, too – Yuta, right? I think he would appreciate it.”

“I can ask him,” Taeyong answers, thinking it over. It’d be good to go out – and it would be enjoyable to hang out with Jaehyun, outside of the office, not talk only on the phone. “I’ll let you know.”

“Great,” Jaehyun smiles, dimples on display. Taeyong sees them on the backs of his eyelids long after he leaves the building.

🌙

They’re walking down the street when Taeyong feels it.

At first, it’s only a fleeting thought, at the back of his mind, like a fly buzzing around his ear. The buzz grows to a hum to a vibration within his bones, and he stops in his tracks, looks up at the sky.

It spills across his skin, from head to toe, slowly, dripping like paint. He looks to Doyoung on his side, and they both understand it at the same time.

“He’ll be here, somewhere,” Taeyong says, turning to look back. The street stretches on and on in front of him in a straight line, bracketed from both sides by buildings, dark and windowless, and at the end of it _something_ waits hidden in plain sight, ready to jump and strike, preparing to destroy and hurt.

“We have to find him,” he repeats, like he did so many times before.

Doyoung looks uncertain, watching down the street. Taeyong doesn’t begrudge him the hesitation; his first instinct is to run away, too. But they have to find the little kid, need to try to help him get away. It’s been so long since Taeyong last encountered him, he needs to take the chance, he cannot let himself miss it now – so instead of walking in the other direction, like he wants to, he makes himself walk towards the invisible darkness.

Doyoung follows after a while, catches up with him in a few long strides. They share a long look – they’re doing this for the kid.

The further they walk along the street, the more on edge Taeyong feels. It appears to be affecting Doyoung the same way; his face is set in hard lines, expression strained, apprehensive.

The street opens, as they pass through, shifts to a highway, nothing on each side but land, infinite stretches of it. There, in the middle of the road up ahead, the boy stands looking at them like he’s been waiting for them.

Taeyong walks towards him, noticing that he looks scared, confused, like he’s on the brink of tears. He isn’t looking at Taeyong, however; he’s staring at something behind Taeyong. Taeyong remembers the last time he’d seen him in a similar situation, but this time the nightmare is in front of them. The only thing that’s behind him is—Doyoung.

Taeyong follows the kid’s line of sight and looks back. Doyoung stopped walking, and Taeyong must not have noticed – he stands far away, frowning, looking every bit as lost as the child himself.

Taeyong turns to the boy, “It’s okay, he’s my friend,” he tells him, supposing the kid is afraid of him, not having met Doyoung before. “We will help you.”

The child takes a step back. Shakes his head. Taeyong stands frozen for a second, not sure what to do, what is happening; and then wind howls all around them.

It ruffles the kid’s hair, his clothes, picks up and presses at Taeyong’s frame, like it wants to push him away. It picks up, growing stronger and stronger, viler and more vicious by each second.

“Doyoung!” Taeyong screams at him over the noise, but he cannot be sure if Doyoung can hear him at all.

The child doesn’t wait for Taeyong to make up his mind, or for Doyoung to change the dream around them – he runs away, as fast as he can he runs across the field, away from them both, from the whirlwind that threatens to send Taeyong flying.

Taeyong cannot let him get away, not again. He prepares to go after him, but there is a hand grabbing him by the arm, holding him back, tugging him in the other direction. Taeyong struggles against him, screams at him to let go, sees Doyoung’s mouth moving in retaliation, but his words get lost in the air.

He manages to wrestle his arm free. A shadow passes across Doyoung’s face, his features twist with it, and it looks like hurt – Taeyong feels bad for it but Doyoung must understand, must know that Taeyong needs to do this, surely?

Their gazes lock once more, and then Taeyong blinks, and Doyoung disappears into nothingness, right before his eyes. There is a part of him that wants to cry out for him, beg him to come back, tell him sorry; the other part takes control of his body and turns to take off in the direction the kid ran off to, his legs carrying him on their own now that he’s not being restricted.

He is too late. The nightmare gets to him first, wraps its invisible talons around his body, cradles him, smothers him. The scream he lets out gets lost somewhere in between the air and the sky above.

Taeyong opens his eyes. Blinks, exhales, inhales, exhales again. The window to his room is blown wide open, curtain blowing in the wind and rain coming in. A storm rages outside. Taeyong struggles to detach himself from the covers, paddles over to the window to shut it closed, secures the latch. He rests his forehead against the cold glass, watches the street outside be illuminated in white by bolts of lightning, listens to the rage of the heavens as it strikes.

Sweat clings to his skin like a layer of foil. Taeyong walks to his desk, turns on the desk lamp, sits down. He opens the little notebook in front of him, takes a pen in his hand, and starts writing.

🌙

He doesn’t pay attention in class at all. The professor stands in front of the board and goes on and on, but Taeyong doesn’t hear a single word. The dream journal is opened in front of him, and Taeyong is racking his brain for any little detail, anything he can think of that he hasn’t yet written down.

Yuta notices, and leans into his space to read Taeyong’s lazy scribble, “What’s that?”

It’s a good thing they’re sitting in the very last row of seats, far enough from the professor that he won’t hear them whispering. Probably. “It’s what my therapist told me to do.”

He lets Yuta read over the lines. _Flowers, the moon, something evil and malicious, Hongdae, mirrors. “_ Are those your dreams?”

“Mm-hm,” Taeyong hums, not looking up from the little notebook. “What I can remember of them.”

“I usually remember everything, after I wake up,” Yuta says.

Taeyong actually means it when he answers, “Lucky you.”

There is silence, for a moment. When Taeyong looks up, he finds Yuta’s eyes trained firmly on his face, like he’s looking over it. He’s frowning, and there’s something in his eyes Taeyong cannot describe or figure out. In the end, Yuta looks away, “I guess.”

Taeyong doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he chooses to talk about something else instead. “Hey,” he says, making Yuta look back at him, “Are you free this Saturday?”

Yuta shrugs, “Have no plans yet. Why?”

“Great,” Taeyong leans back in his seat, and as quietly as he can, tells Yuta about Jaehyun’s invitation to join him for the convention. Yuta agrees to go. Taeyong shoots Jaehyun a short text about it and gets a smiley face and a thumbs up in return.

They get shushed, by another student. Yuta resumes taking notes of the lecture and Taeyong returns to his dream journal. There is something at the edge of his mind, that he’s been trying to put to words – there is someone, in his dreams, he’s sure of it. He doesn’t know who it is, cannot remember a face or a name or anything else; can see only a shadow, a glimpse of light, an outline against the sun.

He can feel affection swell in his heart, strangely. Like this person meant – means – something to him. There’s a little bit of sadness mixed within the fondness too, and after the dream of last night, a sort of frustration that he cannot explain.

He heaves a sigh and puts his pen down. He wonders whether Kun will be able to make any sense of this, when Taeyong has it all in his head and he himself is unable to do so.

🌙

Taeyong finds himself in a forest.

There is a bridge, long, wooden, ranging from one giant tree to the next, connected to the bark. Taeyong stands in the very middle, hands gripping the railing tight, feeling the vibrations of it, the strain underneath his fingers. Doyoung stands just a few steps beside him, silent, motionless, looking right in front of him. There, in the distance over the horizon, stands a tree. The bark is thick, spans miles and miles, the roots protruding from the ground like hills and mountains. The tree reaches into the sky and beyond, its crown hidden within the clouds, too far up to be seen from where Taeyong and Doyoung survey it from the ground.

Taeyong looks over Doyoung, grazes his eyes over his profile, the slant of his nose, his jaw. There is a troubled look written all over his features, like there’s something bothering him, keeping the frown on his face. They didn’t part on the best note, the previous night; but as soon as Taeyong entered the dream Doyoung was by his side, guiding him to this place.

They haven’t talked much, this time. Taeyong keeps replaying the events of last night in his mind, and he feels like that’s what Doyoung must be thinking about as well. If it’s intuition, or something else, he doesn’t know, but he’s sure they’re thinking of the same thing.

He walks closer to Doyoung, stops close enough that their shoulders knock together. Taeyong speaks in a quiet voice, careful not to sound accusing; he doesn’t want to berate Doyoung, not at all. He wants to understand him. “Why did you leave?”

Doyoung will know what he’s alluding to, Taeyong thinks. By the way Doyoung’s brow furrows further, he figures he’s right. Taeyong waits for a reply, gives him time to figure out what he wants to say, to give him an explanation. But Doyoung keeps quiet, so Taeyong continues after a while. “It’s going to be difficult, finding him again.”

Doyoung remains silent. Taeyong turns away then, looks over the big tree again. There is a story that he can remember, though he doesn’t know who told him of it – his mother or his grandma or his father. In the story, a myth of the world is described, explained: in the center of existence there is a tree, the giver of life, the protector of all there is, and all there ever will be. The tree is called a god, of sorts; a sort of timeless being that looks over everything and everyone, vast and everlasting.

Taeyong imagines if the god was to exist, it would look a little something like this tree right in front of him.

When Doyoung speaks, it’s so quiet Taeyong nearly misses it. “Why do you want to save him?”

Taeyong considers his answer, for a moment. He wants to help him, had wanted to since he himself was a child. The words of his grandmother are still vivid and loud in his ears, as is the night she had spoken them, _there is a boy here that needs help._ “I think,” he starts, slowly, “that that is the reason why I’m awake.” He cannot explain it, but it feels right. “He needs help, to get out of here, and somehow... somehow it feels like it needs to be me.”

And at that, the corners of Doyoung’s mouth turn upwards in a smile, bit by tiny bit. “You’re a good person, Taeyong.” He says, sadness lacing his words despite the smile on his lips. “I really admire that about you. I admire your conviction.” He pauses, “But I don’t know if you can help him.”

Taeyong doesn’t understand, “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t get it when I saw him, but I think I’m starting to figure it out,” Doyoung replies, and then, “It’s me.”

Taeyong is lost. He hears the words, but they don’t make sense inside his head. Maybe sensing that Taeyong isn’t really following, Doyoung goes on, “He’s me, when I first got here. He’s... I don’t think he’s real.”

But none of this is real, Taeyong wants to say. He tries to understand, parse together what Doyoung is telling him, but it’s difficult – he feels like he’s trying to put something together that is still missing too many pieces. “Then what is he?”

“I am not sure and I’m only guessing,” Doyoung says, “Before this – before waking up here, there was a place I was in. It’s hard to describe. It was dark, and endless, and it felt like forever.”

A chill runs up Taeyong’s spine, as he tries to imagine what Doyoung is describing. He goes on, “There was no one there. It was so quiet I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. It was – like I was stuck between life and death, stranded. And then I was here.”

Taeyong cannot help it – he reaches out, hugs him around the shoulders with one arm. He whispers his name. “Doyoung.”

“I was only a kid, I didn’t know what was going on,” Doyoung breathes out, “I was scared, and I was stuck, and I wanted to wake up – and no matter how much I pushed and tried, I couldn’t. There is – I feel myself, I feel my body, but there is nothing beyond. And that terrified me. Everything about this place was scary, and I thought that eventually, something would come get me, like a monster that would try to kill me.” He laughs, a bitter sound, so out of place between them. “And eventually, something did.” He looks at Taeyong then, and Taeyong starts to understand, very, very slowly. “So I ran.”

It all comes to him in bits and pieces, but eventually all of it clicks together. “You created it.”

There’s a bitter tone to Doyoung’s voice, “A monster of my own making, straight out of my childhood nightmares. I didn’t realize, until I saw him.”

Taeyong’s head is spinning with the knowledge. That would mean that all his efforts with the kid – all of it was wasted, if he’s a fragment of Doyoung’s mind, a projection that the dreamspace made real. If the kid is Doyoung, then Doyoung is the person Taeyong needs to help – but he’d wanted to do that regardless. He feels silly, for not realizing it sooner himself.

“What does it mean, though?” Taeyong asks, “For you.”

“I don’t know, but maybe I should meet him again,” Doyoung suggests, unsure, “I feel like I should talk to him.”

“Can you find him now?” Taeyong asks, and gently retracts his hand to himself from Doyoung’s frame.

“I think so,” he nods, “But I’m gonna need your help.”

“Sure,” Taeyong answer at once, “Anything.”

“Okay,” Doyoung says, and reaches out to take one of Taeyong’s hands in his own. Taeyong notices belatedly that Doyoung’s fingers are trembling where they rest against his own. “Think of a place where you saw him.”

There is only one place that comes to mind when Taeyong thinks of the kid. It takes only an intake of breath for the dream around them to change.

The surface of the lake is unmoving and still, smooth like a mirror. It reflects the dark sky above, the moon and the stars shining bright down upon them. They stand at the edge of it, and right across from them, there is the boy, where Taeyong was sure he would be waiting.

Doyoung does not let go of Taeyong’s hand, but he steps forward, towards his younger self. It seems like the child is staring right back at Doyoung, calm and anticipating. Doyoung said he wanted to talk to him, but as Taeyong watches them, it seems like the conversation happens in complete silence, a dialogue without words.

In the horizon, there is the darkness that Taeyong knows so well now, blacker than black, insistent, coming towards them, unstoppable. Taeyong feels it, feels the sensation of a looming threat above them. Inevitable.

The child turns around to face it, raises a tiny fist and points. There it is, he seems to say, just there, at the edge of the forest. He turns around, and extends his other hand to Doyoung, palm open and inviting.

Doyoung’s hold on Taeyong’s fingers tightens, almost painfully.

Just then, the nightmare comes into shape, slowly. It starts to color itself, until the pitch black is replaced by a white so pure it almost hurts to look at. The form of it transforms, rounds up, puffs out; it reminds Taeyong of a giant cloud, a body of fluffy smoke.

The kid’s mouth moves, just a single word, but Taeyong cannot hear any sound. Beside him, Doyoung gently gasps, and at once falls to his knees. His grip around Taeyong’s hand slips.

Taeyong crouches to look at him, “Hey, hey, what is it?”

But Doyoung isn’t there – his eyes are staring straight ahead, not at the child – but at the cloud in front of them. It stretches so far and wide it reaches from the ground to the sky and further, and then only seems to grow and grow.

Doyoung’s eyes, always so sharp and perceptive, look dull now. Fogged over. Overcast from the inside out. Like he’s there, but not quite. It’s weird to see him like that, it’s jarring and disorienting. Taeyong doesn’t know what to do, resorts to calling his name, hoping it can bring him back somehow. “Doyoung.”

It takes a moment, but Doyoung replies at last, voice so gravelly it makes the hair on Taeyong’s body stand on end. “I see it.” He says. “I see beyond.”

Taeyong is almost afraid to ask. It comes out in a whisper. “What’s there?”

He doesn’t really expect Doyoung to answer, because he doesn’t think Doyoung hears him at all – but he must, as the next thing he says is, “My family. My mother, my father, and hyung. I—” Doyoung reaches out with one hand, as if to touch someone – but no one is there. His fingers curl in on air, and he frowns. “Oh.”

The outstretched hand falls down, slowly, and comes rest over Doyoung’s own heart like he feels it underneath his palm. “He misses them.” Doyoung sighs, “He was looking for me for so long.”

He must mean the child – the kid version of himself. Taeyong cannot imagine he could be talking about anyone else. The kid is looking up at the cloud as well, one hand still offered for Doyoung to take. Doyoung talks like he’s having a revelation – like everything is suddenly becoming perfectly clear. “I didn’t understand him, and he was scared. He needed me to figure it out first. He was trying to bring it to me, but I hid away.”

Taeyong is desperately trying to keep up, “You mean the nightmare?”

And then Doyoung comes back – his eyes flick to Taeyong’s, as black and present as he knows and remembers them, the way they usually are. “It’s not a nightmare,” he says, “I think it’s a way out.”

A bolt of lightning cuts across the cloud, through it and from it, silent. A way out – how could it be? Taeyong still doesn’t know much about the dreamspace, but he’s sure that whatever this is, it’s something bad – a storm waiting to happen, to wreak havoc upon anyone and anything that comes in its way. Taeyong got caught in its center before, can remember how it felt, what had happened when it caught up and devoured him whole—

And in the blink of an eye, he understands. A way out.

“Are you sure?” he asks him, as his heart falls into his stomach.

“No, not at all,” Doyoung shakes his head, “But it’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet.” Taeyong recalls another moment, the memory of an aquarium, and Doyoung’s voice, _I’ve never died in my dreams before._

Taeyong thinks it could work. He woke up when he died in his dreams numerous times – whatever it is that keeps Doyoung under, maybe this is the way to break out of it. Taeyong thinks it’s worth a try, at least – but he finds that he is selfish, suddenly. If Doyoung wakes up, really wakes up, will he ever return?

He regards the kid again, only to have a reason to turn away from Doyoung’s burning gaze. This is why he’s here though, isn’t it? He wanted to help the child for so long – and now, maybe Doyoung can finally get out of here, and live in reality the way he is supposed to. But if he does – Taeyong cannot help but wonder if they will ever meet again. Taeyong realizes suddenly that he still doesn’t know a lot about Doyoung, like where he’s from. And if this works, he might never get the chance to talk to him again and ask him. And asking now doesn’t seem like the best time.

Worst of all, he doesn’t want him to go yet. It’s his damn heart, begging him to keep Doyoung for longer, not to let him leave, talk to him a little bit more. But he chances a look at him and Doyoung looks happy – like he has found hope. Like he’s excited to give this crazy idea a try. He misses his family, Taeyong knows this. He should get the chance to be with them again. He was only a kid, when he got stuck here.

And Taeyong gave a promise. _Will you save him?_

“You should go,” he tells Doyoung, “They’re waiting for you.”

When he looks at Doyoung again, he finds his expression complicated, unreadable. He is flitting his gaze all over Taeyong’s face, like he’s seeing it for the first time and wishes to memorize it. When their eyes meet, Doyoung says, “I don’t know if it will work.”

Taeyong wants to reply, _you should try anyway,_ but he finds the words stuck in his throat.

“If it doesn’t,” Doyoung continues, “I guess we’ll see each other again. I hope. But if it does...” he pauses. Taeyong realizes belatedly how close they sit next to each other. “I don’t know if I’ll return. If I’ll know how to stay awake again.”

He’s voicing Taeyong’s own thoughts out loud, “So I think I should say thank you.” Doyoung smiles, “I wouldn’t have been able to get to this point if it wasn’t for you.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Taeyong breathes out, “To help you.”

“I’m glad that I met you,” Doyoung says into the space between them, and Taeyong thinks that he’d gotten even closer somehow, their chests almost pressing together.

“Don’t say that like you’re never gonna see me again,” Taeyong murmurs, and feels Doyoung’s fingers come press against his jaw.

“I can only hope that I do.” Doyoung says as he gently angles Taeyong’s head towards himself a bit more. Taeyong’s own hands reach out of their own accord – one to grip at Doyoung’s wrist, and the other to rest against Doyoung’s cheek.

“I will find you,” Taeyong says, “Somehow, I will find you.”

Doyoung leans down and kisses him. It can last a moment or an eternity, Taeyong cannot tell. He closes his eyes and leans into Doyoung, feels his touch – there and fleeting at the same time, washing over him in waves, crashing against him again and again.

Taeyong wonders, is it silly to fall for someone who exists only within your dreams? Possibly. Maybe it’s the stupidest thing he ever allowed himself to do.

When they part, they take a moment to merely look at each other. Then, from the corner of his eye, Taeyong notices movement – the kid came closer, to their side of the lake’s shore, closer than Taeyong was ever able to get to him. Now, for the first time, he is able to see his face in full, can notice the similarities between him and Doyoung; he was a very cute child.

The kid extends his hand, expectant. With one last caress to Taeyong’s cheek, Doyoung lets him go and slowly gets to his feet. Taeyong is unable to do more than sit frozen where he is and regard them. He watches as Doyoung takes the kid’s hand in his, and the child leads him forward, across the lake. They walk over the surface like it’s the ground. The storm waits on the other side.

Everything is silent. The kid lets go of Doyoung, and bounds forward, jumps into the cloud, disappears within. Doyoung stands in place, tiny against it all, a lonely star within the universe.

He turns back. The nightmare creeps forward, catches up with him at last. It spreads around him, consumes and absorbs him inch by inch, until at last Doyoung too is lost within its body.

He’s gone. Taeyong knows this, the way a person sometimes knows things within their dreams – intuition, or a sense beyond their full understanding. Doyoung is gone. It worked.

Soon, the cloud disperses, the white turns to black turns to blue and it dissolves all around, takes with it the night and the moon above and leaves way to bright blue sky and the sun’s persisting light.

The dream comes at him forcefully, this time. Without Doyoung to keep it at bay, it engulfs Taeyong from each side, presses and presses at him until he is forced to give way. He lets go, lets the current carry him through. There’s no point in being awake anymore.

🌙

Taeyong never misses a session at Kun’s.

It’s been a few months, now. His sleep regime has pretty much gotten to the point where he would consider it normal and optimal – he sleeps a full eight hours each night. Taeyong isn’t sure if it’s the pills, or only that the effort of keeping to his daily schedule is starting to bear fruit, but Taeyong starts to feel rested after sleeping, and his headaches ease until they’re no more.

Kun considers this a success. He reads through Taeyong’s journal during each meeting, takes notes in his own papers, but lately he stopped frowning as he does so. Taeyong, too, feels like he’d gotten better – he feels it, within himself, that something in him _eased._ He feels better. He is better.

It’s a complicated feeling, he thinks.

Kun’s theory is that whatever was plaguing Taeyong’s mind in his dreams seems to have been resolved. It feels right, when he says it out loud one day; Taeyong knows that it’s true, even though he has no idea what he did, or what really changed. The only thing that remains is the sensation of relief.

Despite that, he keeps going to the sessions. He finds that talking to Kun really helps, even when it’s not about his dreams – and he doesn’t see a reason to stop, yet. Taeyong’s sister often calls him to check up on him, tells him she’ll take care of the bills, that he doesn’t need to worry about any of that; so he takes her up on the offer.

There’s also Jaehyun. The two of them have become great friends –and after hanging out with him at the convention, Yuta seemed to take to him as well. They meet up again and again, they hang out, they have fun.

One evening, though, the three of them are hanging out – Taeyong notices something. It’s subtle, maybe a subconscious gesture more than anything else: Yuta takes Jaehyun’s hand and holds it, for a moment, between his fingers. It’s nothing unusual, really, Yuta is an affectionate person – but as Taeyong watches Yuta’s eyes on Jaehyun’s face as Jaehyun talks, the way Jaehyun’s ears and cheeks turn a pretty pink at the attention, how he turns his hand so he can grip Yuta’s hand back – it makes something within Taeyong’s chest hurt.

It isn’t jealousy, however. He’s happy for them – especially for Yuta, because Yuta deserves all the best in the world, and Taeyong thinks Jaehyun can be that and so much more for him. No, he’s feeling something else. It’s a mess of an emotion somewhere within his soul, and it blindsides him for a second with its intensity. It feels like – like something he felt in a dream.

He doesn’t know who or what, but he feels that he _misses._ There is a sadness that he cannot begin to comprehend or describe flowing through him, incapacitating. He freezes for a moment, tries to make sense of it or shake the feeling off. Thankfully, too absorbed in each other, neither Jaehyun nor Yuta notice. It gives Taeyong enough time to overcome it in the moment, though he still thinks about it even hours later.

🌙

Taeyong knows that Doyoung isn’t there, but he still searches for him.

He tries to do what he did the night he found Doyoung in the theater – but to no avail. Without Doyoung’s presence, Taeyong is unable to keep his lucidity for long, and the little time that he has bears no positive results. But he knows that it wouldn’t anyway, does he not? Doyoung is gone.

Taeyong doesn’t lose hope, though – if Doyoung had awoken once, who’s to say he cannot do it again?

And so Taeyong can only wait for him to come back.

🌙

Taeyong sits in the waiting room. It’s already past the allotted start of his session, yet the door to the room remains closed. Through it, Taeyong can make out muffled voices, so he knows that Kun and Jaehyun are there.

Twenty minutes after the supposed start of his session, a guy finally comes out, followed closely by Jaehyun. They talk in low voices, enough so that Taeyong doesn’t hear what Jaehyun says, only hears the other person’s affirmative.

They stand in the doorway, in a way that light pours through the door outside into the waiting room, and washes everything in orange. Taeyong has to squint against it, to look at the two – the other guy has got a hoodie on, covering the better part of his head.

Jaehyun walks further into the waiting room, just to clear the doorway. He says, louder this time, “Taeyong, you can go in. Sorry you had to wait.”

“It’s fine,” Taeyong answers, getting to his feet, “I don’t have anywhere else to be, anyway.”

He’s about to go through to the office when he glances to his side at the other guy. He is staring at him, eyes budging out of his head, expression shell-shocked like he’d just seen a ghost. Taeyong feels a chill run up the back of his spine, and then he’s walking into the room and Jaehyun shuts the door after him, softly.

Kun gives him an apologetic smile, “Sorry. The previous session got prolonged unexpectedly.”

“I don’t mind,” Taeyong answers, mind stuck behind him somewhere, the guy’s stunned expression at the backs of his eyelids.

“Great,” Kun clasps his hands together and sits in his usual chair. “Shall we, then?”

🌙

The moon hangs low in the dark sky overhead. It bathes everything around Taeyong in glistening silver light, a sort of translucent quality to the glow. It is a loud, busy night; he stands by a pool, and around him a house party rages on, youthful and noisy.

Taeyong holds a paper cup in his hand.

There are people milling about everywhere. Taeyong lost Yuta within the crowd in the first half an hour upon their arrival, but that was to be expected. He found himself a drink, he talked to Youngho for a while, and then he made his way outside, feeling like the inside felt way too stuffy.

There are people in the backyard as well, though not as many. There is a bunch of boys that are attempting to play table tennis to the side; Taeyong watches them for a while, but they are too drunk already to play in any sort of entertaining way. There is a couple to the side of him that has not stopped making out for the entire time he has been out here so far. The pool is undisturbed – it’s not warm enough in the night now for a swim.

The moon reflects in the water, the image turned upside down, perfectly mirrored. There is the sky and the stars, blinking at him, there are the trees around the yard swaying in phantom breeze, there is a figure standing at the opposite side.

Taeyong looks at the person’s face – and finds that he recognizes it. He saw him only once, but his eyes are unmistakable; it’s the boy that he saw outside of Kun’s office. He completely forgot about him, in the past few weeks.

They stand opposite each other, each at one side of the pool between them. The other guy stands motionless, facing Taeyong’s way. He is still, unmoving and rigid like a statue. He is dressed in all black – black hoodie, black track pants, black sneakers.

He is looking right at Taeyong. Taeyong thinks that he must have recognized him as well, from their first encounter outside of Kun’s office – now his face is impassive, guarded, seeming almost cold. He keeps staring, however, and under that intensity, Taeyong can feel the skin on his cheeks starting to burn.

A moment passes. And then the guy starts walking – around the edge of the pool, right to where Taeyong is standing. Taeyong watches him approach, intrigued but apprehensive.

The stranger speaks in a quiet, measured voice, “There’s a party going on in there,” he points to the door. “Why are you out here, alone?”

Taeyong blinks, as the words register in his mind. He can’t help it – he laughs. “You’re by yourself out here too, though.”

The guy searches his face, like he’s looking for something; Taeyong holds his breath for a moment. And then the guy smiles. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Aren’t you here with any friends?” Taeyong asks.

“Jaehyun invited me, actually,” he answers, and Taeyong doesn’t find that surprising at all. He admires Jaehyun’s friendliness, the way he genuinely cares for other people.

“I didn’t even know he was here,” Taeyong admits. Yuta hadn’t mentioned him when he asked Taeyong to go with him to this party, but maybe he should have expected it.

“He disappeared somewhere with his boyfriend about half an hour ago,” the guy says, and his tone betrays both parts amusement and frustration.

“Oh,” Taeyong says, “That would be my best friend.”

“Well, I mean no offense,” he says, and smiles wide – and Taeyong cannot help but find his smile infections as well as pretty, “But then it’s your best friend’s fault that I’m out here by myself.”

“Fair enough,” Taeyong takes a sip of his drink, just to hide his dopey smile, “What about other people?”

“I don’t know anyone else,” the guy says, and then adds with a hum, “Well, except for you, I guess. We met before.”

“Outside of the office, yes,” Taeyong nods, “I remember you.”

The reply comes just after a pause a second too long. “Right, outside of Kun’s office.”

The pause makes Taeyong think it over, briefly. They haven’t met anywhere else, have they? Taeyong thinks he would have remembered a face like that, but still – when he looks at him, there’s is the tiniest bit of recollection at the back of his mind, a vague sensation. He frowns, “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t yet. Sorry. I’m going about this the wrong way, again.” And he laughs, a bit self-conscious. “My name is Doyoung. It’s nice to meet you.”

That is the beginning.

🌙

**Author's Note:**

> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/neocxxlture)|[twitter](https://twitter.com/neocxxlture)


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